Ice Dyed Parfait

 

Last week Lori posted a tutorial on how to dye fabric using ice cubes, it is similar to snow dyeing.   She did a ‘parfait’ which is layering a few fabrics in one jar and using different dyes on each layer. You can see Lori’s instructions here.  I had never tried dyeing a parfait or using ice cubes before so I wanted to give it a try.  The top pictures shows my jar with three layers of fabric.  The bottom layer has Bright Yellow and Cerulean Blue, the second layer has Hot Pink and Bright Yellow and the top layer is Cerulean Blue and Hot Pink.  I used more dye powder then Lori suggested as I wanted dark bright colors, I used about 1 tsp total per layer.  You can see the dye powder on the ice cubes in the next picture.  I also crushed my ice cubes a bit, Tim smashed them with a hammer for me.  I had tried using the blender but it just made slush.

I let the ice and fabric sit in the jar overnight.   By morning all the ice had melted and the jar looked like this.

 

You can see my excess dye powder on the fabric that didn’t dissolve. I think I would use a bit less dye next time.   Here are the results of my half meter pieces.

There is a similar texture to snow dyeing and I like how the colors from the other layers sneak into each other fabrics without over powering the main color combinations.

Curved Log Cabin

This is Gail’s Curved Log Cabin quilt and she asked me to quilt feathers, any kind of feathers.  I decided to do open feathers and have the ones on the beige fabric going clockwise and the ones in red fabric going counter clockwise. I matched the thread color so had a lot of thread changes as I would complete a section and then roll.

The sun finally decided to shine as we’ve had lot of rain this week but we really needed so I’m not complaining as it as been so dry here.

Back from Camp for the Last Time

 
Not much quilting going on here this week as I spent 3 days working kitchen duty at my son’s Grade 8 camping trip.  This was my fourth and final time volunteering at this camp as the school only organizes this activity for  the grade 6 and 8 students and I went with both boys for both grades.   There were three of us working in the kitchen and we got along great so that made it a lot of fun.  Only had to deal with one minor incident and that was due to the previous group at the camp leaving a puddle of bacon grease in the oven. When we turned on the oven for the first time we were wondering why smoke was pouring out of it!   We opened up the oven door to find a flaming grease puddle!!  We shut the door and the fire eventually suffocated but the kitchen and dining hall was full of smoke!  Took a few hours for that to clear and we joked that since we all smelt like smoked bacon the bears will be looking for us licking their lips!  Thanks goodness there were no bear sightings this trip.  It rained on and off but that didn’t stop any of the kids activities.  They canoed, fished, hiked and baked bannock over the campfire whether it was raining or not.   I took these pictures early on morning before the kids were up.

                                                                                 Here is the kitchen/dining hall and the next pictures is of some of the cabins, there are 10 in total.

We came home Wednesday and then today I took the boys to the orthodontist which is a 800km return trip so tonight I’m exhausted!!  Don’t think I’ll be doing any quilting until next week as I’m so behind with the housework and still have to finalize a few more details on our kitchen renovation.

Lovers Knot

 

This is Gail’s Lovers Knot quilt and it’s 100” x 112”!   I love the colors she picked as the soft green and pink are very complimentary.  I chose to quilt it with the Whirlygig panto since the green fabric has a subtle leaf print.  The batting is Dream Blend and the thread a medium green So Fine thread. It looked so good nestled in with the green in my yard!

Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments and emails about our new quilting pattern.   The first person who bought our pattern off our Etsy site was Gail and she said will be sending it to me to quilt!  :)

Alternate Routes….Our First Pattern!

I’m thrilled to be able to share my latest quilting venture which is a collaboration with my amazing friend Lori.   Alternate Routes is our first original quilt pattern and is now on sale in PDF form in our new ETSY shop here.  Alternate Routes  was a project we designed for our respective guilds and we knew that we needed to take this one step further.   So we spent the last month polishing and rewriting the pattern until we were satisfied with the final results.   This is an intermediate level pattern and hope that those who try it find our instructions to be clear and precise.   The best part about this pattern is that we include 20 different layout options but there are many more layouts to discover. 

It took us awhile to come up with a name for our new design business and when Lori suggested Highway 10 Designs I knew we had a winner.  You see Highway 10 is the one and only road I travel along (for 575km) when I go to visit Lori in Dauphin, it’s what connects us.  This also gave us focus for coming up with a name for our pattern and once we had the travel theme in our head Lori again came up with the perfect pattern name Alternate Routes, as this pattern offers so many layout options.  I just love it when things fall in place so well.

Here is Lori’s quilt and she used more modern fabrics and picked an off centered layout. You can see more of her pictures on her blog here.

Since the focus of the pattern is the piecing we both used panto designs for our quilting.   I used Whirlygig as it complimented the print in the batik fabrics.

I found a new location for taking pictures at the new cook shack at the local campground.  I was also trying to get a good picture on Highway 10 but that proved to me more difficult than I first thought.

And here is the one we chose for the cover.

A big thank  you goes out to Desley and Eileen for proof reading our pattern, we really appreciated the time you both spent helping us.   I think this is a start into a new venture for Lori and I as we are already talking about the next pattern!  :)

Quilts Made Modern

This is Yvonne’s quilt and it is made from a pattern in the book Quilts Made Modern by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.   I love the quilts in their books as they do a wonderful job at creating a transparency look with the fabric choices.    Yvonne did a great job at picking her fabrics for this quilt, I just love how it looks.   We decided to use the Raindrops panto as the colors in the quilt shout water and sky.

I’m living in a bit of a mess right now as we are having our skylights taken out and then redoing our kitchen in July.  I’m very excited but there are so many decisions that need to be made!  I don’t have a lot of time to spent on the computer so my blog posts will be a less frequent than usual but I’ll post when I can!  Lori and I are still working on our special project that we will be sharing soon but our Type A personalities are what’s slowing us down. We want it to be perfect!

Just a Tease…

I’ve been working on a secret project this week and here is a sneak peek.  I’ll be able to share all the great news next week!  I’ve had a few people say it’s not like me to go so long without blogging which is true but this project involved more work than Lori and I expected.  So many details to work out before the big reveal.  I can hardly wait to share!!!

Grandma’s Stars Quilt Top

I was able to finish all my Grandma’s Star blocks at our guilds UFO day on Saturday and even made one extra as I change my layout plan when I got home.  My original plan was for a rectangular layout but that was too narrow so I decided to go with a square layout and add borders.    I used templates by Matilda’s Own to make these blocks and  you can only get them in Australia.   I think I’ll quilt this one in the summer and do some custom quilting on it for fun as I do not have anyone to give this too yet.

Spinwheels Quilt

 

This is Eileen’s quilt and the pattern is called Spinwheels from Tricia Cribbs book Turning Ten.    She use bright fabrics from her stash and a very cute white on white teddy bear print for the background.   The backing is Jade Cuddle, the batting is Dream Puff and the pantograph is called Popcorn.  This combination makes for a very soft cuddly quilt!

Grandma’s Star Block Update

I’ve been working on my Grandma’s Star blocks and have 7 complete so far. I’m really enjoying these blocks and the challenge of the ‘Y’ seams.  I have 6 more cut out and ready to piece and that will be my project at our guilds UFO day this Saturday.   I think I’ll make a baby quilt out of these blocks and alternates with rows of 3 blocks and 2 blocks and add a triangle fillers between the blocks.