Soy Wax Ice Dyeing Revisited

Had a great time over the weekend creating some soy-waxed, ice-dyed fabric.  It was the first time in ten months, I felt well enough physically to do it, since my back problems and back surgery. Believe it or not, there is a lot of bending, lifting, carrying, etc. involved in the process. Anyway, I had a ball!

This was a piece I over-dyed. Here it is after applying the soy wax.

Here's my table all set up, ready for Ice and Dyes, 

after doing some dye planning.

Here is the over-dyed piece, shown in the top photo. I used grape and black on it.

After soy waxing, I used Bronze, Lemon yellow and Powerberry dyes.

This was also an over-dyed piece. It was light pink in places and mostly white. 

 I batiked it and used Chartreuse, Turquoise, Palomino Gold and Powerberry.

This was another over-dyed piece. It was originally dull green with some rust. I batiked it and used Cobalt and Pro-chem Rust Brown.

I used a wooden, carved block made for batiking on this but the design did not come out at all. I think too much wax got into the recessed areas when I dipped it. I used Cayman Isle, Turquoise, Rust Brown and Grape dyes.  

After batiking this piece, I used Pomegranate, Turquoise, Grape and a little Emerald.

Almond Country Quilt Display at Atascadero Library and Buttonhole Wheel Stitch

Last Thursday, at the Atascadero library there was an art reception for the Almond Country Quilt Guild's display of art quilts.  It was a fun event. The quilts were displayed with poems. At the reception, the artists spoke about their quilt, followed by the poet reading their poem. 

The poems were written independent of the quilts. In some instances the poem had a relation to the quilt, but usually not. If you are a local, be sure to check out the exhibit

 which will be up through the month of May.

I'm still trying to do a new embroidery stitch each week as part of the Facebook TAST group.  This week the stitch was the buttonhole wheel. I used two different colors, two strands of each. 

Tie-dyed Easter Eggs and Dick and Jane Quilt

It's been another busy, fun week. I have always enjoyed  dyeing Easter eggs since I was a little girl. I just have to make some every year. This year I made them using paper towels with food coloring and a little bit of water and vinegar in a spray bottle.

I like how you can see the texture left from the paper towels.

My friend, Isolde, is making a quilt for a friend's daughter who just had a baby. Knowing the same family, I offered to quilt it for her.  She did a great job of choosing fabrics and a pattern to really highlight the Dick and Jane blocks.  I decided to free motion quilt around the figures to emphasize them and then did machine quilting in the ditch in all the other seams.

Embroidery on Soy-Wax Linen Quilt

Still working on my TAST project (Take A stitch Tuesday). The last stitch was couching.  I couched some eyelash yarn all around the linen piece. And the, couched down some plants on the left bottom corner. I plan on doing a few on the right side as well.

Below is a close-up of the 'plants.'

Double Rainbow

We've been having lots of rain here. Yeah!! Not so good though for the folks south of us in the Santa Barbara, Mendocino areas though.  They have really had a horrible time of it starting with the fires, then the floods, and the flooding again and again. It's their new normal, unfortunately.

Here is a picture of a beautiful double rainbow we were treated to Saturday night. It was the brightest rainbow I've ever seen. It had an incredibly bright green in it that doesn't show in the photo.

Finished Fabric Manipulated Small Quilt

So I finished my fabric manipulation piece using slashing and blooming techniques.  The edges of the center piece weren't quite parallel to the edges of the quilt, so I couched some ladder/ribbon to the inner edges to disguise that a bit. I pronounce it done!

This week the Take a Stitch Tuesday Facebook group is taking a break to let everyone have a breather and get caught up. It's a good thing because I've been pretty busy with home projects and some quilt displays for our local libraries.  I didn't get to last week's stitch which was couching. I did however, lay out some fun yarns and threads over my piece to play with couching down later this week.

Cretan Stitch with Shisha Mirror

For the Take a Stitch Tuesday Facebook group I'm in, the challenge for this week was the Cretan Stitch.  I found a tutorial online for using it to secure a Shisha mirror, something I've always wanted to learn how to do.  I tried it once years ago and got nothing but frustrated.  This tutorial helped me quite a bit.  https://www.needlenthread.com/2015/01/stitch-fun-shisha-embroidery-with-cretan-stitch.html