Friday Night with Friends

We were a small but select little group of stitchers yesterday - just 14 of us for the last FNwF's of the year. Many thanks to Cheryll for hosting - even though she was off on the high seas no doubt having a great time! Pop over to Cheryll's blog here to see what everyone was working on.

A few weeks ago now I started a new EPP project. I am joining in with lots of other EPPers around the world making quilts based on this 1797 quilt which is in the V&A collection.

Most people are reproducing the quilt using modern fabrics but of course I have to be different! and so I am using my hand dyed fabrics.

I started the quilt in November so have added this to the centre of my quilt and plan to add odd dates along the way to mark my progress.

This is where I am up to so far

so my task for Friday was to baste hexagons for the next couple of rounds and here is my evenings work.

However, fairly early on I decided that I was not keen on the sudden transition from green to yellow - as shown here.

So I hunted through my fabrics for a mottled green and yellow to put inbetween.

Which I much prefer - sorry about some of my photos, we have sunshine and showers here today so it is either too bright or too dark to get a good picture!
However, there was not enough fabric to do a round on the quilt so I got another dye batch underway

and while I was at it a batch of ultramarine and marine violet for another project.

They were left to brew overnight.

It's not a drying day today so I ironed them dry as I am keen to get cutting and basting.

Terrible picture of the green/yellow but it has turned out as I wanted as has the larger piece of marine violet/ ultramarine which will be perfect for the project I have in mind.

So all in all a very profitable evening - many thanks Cheryll for getting us all together again and all through the year.

Sunshine and Solar

It has been a beautiful, sunny day here - warm enough to sit outside after a week of grey, damp weather.
The sunshine reminded me that I have not updated you on the results of my solar dyeing. You may remember that here I told you about the book I had been reading called 'Slow Stitch' which included instructions for slow/solar dyeing.
It's been a lovely, sunny autumn overall so I was able to play with lots of jars of fibres and natural dye.

Each jar contains a half a teaspoon of alum, to help the dyes take, the matter I am using to take the dye from plus an A4 piece of linen or cotton fabric, a skein of cotton or linen thread, some lace and some ricrac. The contents were covered with hot water, given a good stir and then left in the sun for at least two weeks.
I have had some really good results which I have documented in a little record book.

It is interesting to see how the different fibres take the dye.

So here is my collection of fabric and threads - a pleasing variety of colours.

These are my lace's and ricrac.

I plan to start again in the spring trying some different ingredients, in the meant time I want to make a start on slow stitching my collection so far.

Another Mystery Solved

In 2014 I started making a Mystery Quilt from clues given in the four issues of 'The Quilter' that year. You can read about it here although I don't seem to have blogged about it very much. However it did get a mention here a few weeks ago when I layered it up for quilting.
Having decided on a simple wiggly line for the quilting it went very quickly and I soon had a finish - but for some reason it has taken me until now to get it photographed!
So finally, here it is.

The fabrics are all hand dyed and are mostly recycled cotton and linen clothing with some Egyptian cotton sheeting. The curved section is hand pieced, the rest is machine pieced.
This was a budget production using mostly fabrics that I had already in my stash. The border was dyed to work in with the rest of the colours. Sticking with the theme I bought a cheap cotton sheet from the supermarket and dyed it ultramarine for the back.

Being cheap meant that it was quite soft after washing so I starched it to get it to behave during quilting.
A few close ups of the blocks.

And of the quilting.

Great to have another project ticked off my list.

FNSI and CTTY!

I write this in haste as I have only just got my computer back from being updated to Windows 10 (so far so good, thanks mainly to our local computer whizz who has set most things up as they were before!) and we have guests arriving tomorrow and I want to catch the deadline on CTTY.
So here we go.

Many thanks Wendy for having us round again - good to be sewing with friends. Don't forget to go and vist Wendy to see what everyone was doing on Friday.

My next big UFO to finish this year is my Four Seasons crazy hanging and to do that I needed some fabric for sashing and bordering the blocks. I knew I wanted velvet and so having a large quantity of white velvet in my stash it was time to get my dye out. I bought a pot of olive procion dye powder a while ago in preparation and so as it was a nice afternoon out came my bucket and dye was mixed and used outside.
Here is the result which I am very pleased with - lots of nice subtle variations which is the look I am aiming for by not stirring the fabric about too much.

While I had my dyes out I remembered another UFO languishing in the cupboard. This bag was made a couple of years ago and then I didn't like the colour of the handles! And there was only the lining to add and it would have been finished.

Five minutes with the unpicker and the handles were free - why had I not done this before!!
The handles have now been redyed so watch this space for an update, hopefully on the finished bag.

The trouble with dying is that one thing leads to another and so another piece of velvet and some threads and lace were treated with some marine violet and lemon dye - I am very pleased with the results.

So next on my list while the fabrics were soaking in their dyes were these two heat bags which just needed machining together as I had finished appliqueing the hexagon flowers.

I have used the Anni Downs pattern which is like a pillow case so that the bag of wheat inside can be removed to allow the outer to be washed. Brilliant idea I thought. They have not got their wheat bags yet but as they are going in my Christmas present box they can be filled later and in the mean time take less space.  And so this is why I am linking with Anthea and Christmas Through the Year!

Thank you Anthea.

Have a great week.