Marbling and Printing

On Wednesday I spent a lovely day with friends marbling and printing on fabric.

 The day was organised because I said that I have masses of plain coloured fabric which I never use and how can I use it up?

 Marbling was suggested and printing with thickened procion dyes was proposed as a back up for the day.

In the end, because it was so hot the carrageenan paste on which the colour floats for marbling soon started to melt and the colours became too watery. But we got the general idea and the excercise is to be repeated on a cooler day!

Next we mixed up 8 pots of strong procion mx dyes which we thickened with sodium alginate and some bicarbonate of soda. And then spent the next two hours happily stamping, rolling, painting etc onto cotton, linen and silk fabrics.

It was lovely to work outside on a huge covered terrasse - here is some of our work drying in the sun.

Our workspace for the day

When I got home the fabrics had to be ironed to fix the colour and then rinsed and washed with metapex to remove excess dye. More rinsing and then out to dry in the sun again.

Here are my fabrics after their final iron.

Having never done this before I had no idea how the colours would hold after washing so I kept before and after samples to compare and found that although in some cases there was slight fading, on the whole the colours remained the same.

Here are some of my favourite pieces.

Printing with sponge letters on cotton

 Ridged sponge roller on cotton

and on linen

 more on cotton

A great day out with friends, delicious lunch provided by our hostess and lots of lovely fabrics to play with - what more could a girl want!

Thank you for dropping by.

Lin

Friday Night Sew In - in the afternoon!

Well, we are out tonight and I had a free afternoon with the added bonus of Test Match Special on the radio! (Sorry you Aussies are not doing so well!)

I decided to spend the afternoon making a present for my birthday stash using this gorgeous Egyptian style fabric that I bought in a sale earlier in the year.

My plan was a pair of placemats but as I was cutting I realised that the fabric was ideal for another friend so I cut enough for another mat.

I kept the design simple as I wanted to show off the gorgeous fabrics.

And at the end of the afternoon I have three mats pieced, layered up for quilting and bindings cut.

A profitable afternoon.

I hope everyone else enjoyed their evening and I look forward to see what everyone has done.

Bye for now.

Lin

A Sunny Walk with Friends - The Plateau d'Argentine

Early this morning (8.30 actually) we met up with friends to take them on one of our favourite walks - around the Plateau d'Argentine near La Rochebeaucourt.
It is a limestone plateau with many interesting features all of which can be seen on a 1 1/2 - 2 hour walk. Starting on the plateau itself which is also used as an airstrip, through some woods then down onto a disused railway line and back to the old village.

This is the airstrip

which is very well known for it's huge collection of orchids in the springtime. Also for the birdlife and some wonderful butterflys.

Looking across the valley

 it is good to see that a field of sunflowers is finally coming into flower - nearly a month later than usual.

Due to my sciatica I had to let the walkers do the circuit on their own and I spent some time photographing some of the flowers.

There is a tiny snail nestling in the middle of the larger one!

I always love the colours in vipers bugloss.

I caught up with the intrepid walkers

to do the short walk to the village as we wanted to show them the recently opened 'cluzeau'.

Cluzeau are caves that were inhabited by man thousands of years ago and there are many examples of them in this area.

Here there are two caves, this is the one going down to the left

You can see the modern steps leading down which are over the ancient stone ones

A residence with an amazing view!

The cave down to the right at some time became a necropolis

This picture (taken off the information board) shows the view of the caves from the valley

The church that you can see in the picture has recently been restored - wouldn't these window designs make amazing quilts?

A lovely morning, but we were glad to be home and in the cool by mid day!

Thank you for dropping by.

Lin

A finished 'Bird' quilt

It seems a long time since I blogged but it has been a busy month. First we had family staying and then I managed to lift a full washing basket awkwardly the result of which is that I now have sciatica. Very nasty and I can now sympathise profusely with all who suffer.
However, I have managed to fit in some sewing and have finished the little quilt that I made using the bird fabric.

I layered it up with some cotton batting and a pretty, lilac floral fabic on the back and then machine ditch quilted down the panels. This was to stabilise it as I knew that I did not want to hand quilt heavily.

I then enlarged some of the little birds from the patterned fabric, made templates from them and used them as quilting designs on the plain fabrics.

I then quilted through the middle of all the branches on the patterned fabric and carried these lines onto the plain fabrics and around the birds.

It's great to have this project completed and stored away.

The Celebrate Hand Quilting facebook group is a wonderful forum for handquilters - very friendly and full of good advice. During a recent discussion about thimbles it was suggested that a Kai No Kuchi would make a good thimble holder. Intrigued, I followed the link http://revolutionarycake.blogspot.fr/2012_11_01_archive.html to find out what these were. Well of course, I then had to make one and here is the result.

The little container measures 3 1/2" from tip to tip. I am very pleased with my first effort. The little clips which are by Clover were invaluable for holding things together as I stitched and the container makes the perfect home for them!

Both the bird fabric and the Clover clips were my Blog Hop wins from Sherry. Thank you very much Sherry - you were right, I have 'fallen in love with those clips'!

I have a few more things to show you but it will have to wait for another day.

Happy stitching!

Lin

A very pleasant afternoon ....

.....was passed cutting and machining to produce this

from this

The layout is based on Anni Downs' Daisy Quilt from 'Some Kind of Wonderful'.

I knew that I did not want to cut the print into small pieces as that would then lose the fun of the design - so this layout seemed like an ideal solution. I cut frour strips out of the fabric and 'fussy cut' them to length. I have a narrow strip left which will make squares for my Scrap Therapy box.

Looking forward to quilting this - I plan to enlarge one or two of the birds from the print to use in my quilting.

I forgot about this orchid yesterday. It is a Lizard Orchid.

Not the prettiest orchid or most colourful, but at over two feet tall it is impressive!

Wishing you all a very good weekend.

Lin

Bee Orchids

After a glorious day yesterday when we were able to sit outside with friends until midnight it is now pouring with rain again.
Before the rain started this morning I managed to get round the garden and photograph a few orchids.

This is a bee orchid - Ophrys apifera.

I have seen a dozen or so around the garden - they seem to be particularly strong plants this year.

This is a variation - I have only found one of these.

We also have plenty of Pyramidal Orchids - Anacamptis pyramidalis.

I have been dying fabric to use with one of the fat quarters that I won a few months ago in the spring blog hop from Sherry.

These are the fabrics I have dyed.

I always add some threads when I am dying - the finer one is coton a broder, the thicker one is sashiko thread. Although all three pieces of fabric were gathered up in the same way only the marine violet piece shows the pattern clearly. The other two pieces are larger and I think I was unable to draw them up as tightly.

Here are my fabrics with the fat quarter from Sherry.

 I am pleased with my colour choices and now have to set to work cutting them up.

Thank you for dropping by.

Lin

Indigo and Shibori fabric

For Christmas my niece sent me two lengths of this lovely indigo and shibori - tie dyed - fabric which she bought in Guinea.

Many countries around the world have a tradition of tie dying fabrc - Japan being the most well known. The Japanese term - Shibori - has now become universally used for manipulating fabric before dying.
West Africa has a long tradition of producing tied and stitch resist fabrics and indigo is the traditional colour used.
I found it interesting that a damask fabric was used for this but looking around on the internet it seems to be the fabric of choice in Guinea.

I love the design used for the damask weave.

In these two pictures you can see the holes made by the stitching that forms the resist when the fabric is dyed.

And here you can see some of the resist thread - sometimes left behind on purpose to prove that the fabric is authentic!

The fabric shouted Kaftan to me so that is what I have made with it.



Welcome to Rosa - the latest follower of my blog. Thank you Rosa.


Much warmer here at last and a lovely clear blue sky today.

Lin