Dreaming of Warmer Days

February 21st, 2007

Yesterday, we drove back to OH from North Carolina where we filmed the footage for the next DVD. It was colder than normal there, but nothing compared to the cold and snow that awaited us here in NW Ohio! There is probably close to a foot of snow outside the kitchen door and a huge ice slick all along the side of the driveway. Oh…I am SO NOT a winter person!

This all makes me daydream about “the good old days,” or days when the sun would shine and you could feel the warmth of the sun on your back. For me, these are perfect days for dyeing fabrics and threads outside. Thinking about this reminds me that I wanted to post about a product I tried last fall that worked really well to make my dyeing time more efficient. The picture below illustrates how I generally like to dye:

hpim0612-rs.jpg

I usually dye-paint my pieces and have them lay out in the sun on these “dye platters” I made out of pieces of hardboard that I covered w/contact paper. This makes them waterproof so you can keep re-using them and they clean up very easily afterward. Anyways, I just keep doing this and working my way further down the driveway with these platters and once a piece dries all the way, I fold it up to be washed along with the others at the end, then clean off my platter, and begin dyeing a new series of fabric pieces. This goes very smoothly but I came up with a way to be doing another series of dyeing large pieces of fabric AT THE VERY SAME TIME!!! The secret is called…(drumroll please!)…

THE WONDER WASHER!!

WW

You can see from the picture on the box that this is a lightweight plastic portable washing machine for small loads. This next picture is the real thing itself:

WW

What I did was that I placed 2 yards of fabric in the wonder washer w/6 cups of dye. It has a timer to agitate the fabric/dye mix for up to 15 minutes and every 15 minutes, I’d just restart the timer for 15 minutes. I only dyed each 2 yard piece for 1 hour and I suspect that the colors would have been even better if I’d gone for the full 2 hours, but I was happy with the results I got. Someone told me that they had dyed up to 4 yards of fabric at a time in the wonder washer, but I’m guessing that you’d have to add a lot more dye. Once my 1 hour cycle was up, I’d gently ring out the fabric over the wonder washer basin and then lay the 2 yards out on the driveway to bake in the sun. I would pour all the leftover dye, (MANY cups) into my plastic squeeze bottles and then use it in my dye painting that I was doing simultaneously with my platters. What a way to get lots of fabric dyed all at the same time! Below is a pic of one of the pieces of fabric from the wonder washer:

WW

You can see that it’s not truly a solid and I suspect that if I’d put an even larger piece of fabric in there, I would have ended up with even more mottling. For me, this is great because I’m not using many true solid colors anymore. If you want to get one yourself, mine cost me $49.95 and I ordered it online. I think I got it from Carol Wright but if you google “wonder washer,” you’ll get a bunch of places that sell it. Good luck!

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!

February 9th, 2007

hpim0560-rs.jpg

The waiting is finally over!

Yes, it’s true, “Fast and Free,” Volume I has finally arrived! It took us awhile to get the new video clip up because we realized we needed to scramble and find a new plug-in to let us have more than one clip on the website. But, it’s ready to go, so if you want to see a preview video clip, head over to Instructional DVDs and scroll down to the Fast and Free video box. Give it some time to buffer, (or download) and voila!

Hollywood, here we come!

Update on the Fast and Free Update!

February 6th, 2007

I received word from UPS today that the first shipment of DVD’s will come tomorrow, Wed 2/7/07! I need to watch one disc from start to finish to reassure myself there were no problems with replication, (i.e. could the replicator sneak in a brief interlude of porno between quilting scenes?!) and presuming there are not, (I expect there to be NO problems), then it should be available for sale Thursday 2/8/07. If everything goes as planned, there should be a video clip available to preview on the website to give you a sense of what is covered in the DVD. In a snapshot now:

-Total run time is 2 hours and 12 minutes
– Chapter line-up includes:
Basics of Free Motion Quilting (machine requirements, special feet, needles, tips to make the job easier and stitching better, etc)
Preparing the Quilt Sandwich (importance of adequate basting, how to create a spray basting wall, demo of spray basting a quilt on spray basting wall)
Sewing Machine Tension (explanations and illustrations of how tension is created and modified and active demonstrations on the machine of how to make adjustments)
Let’s Quilt! (getting started, general tips, stopping and starting a line of quilting)
Four chapters of detailed instructions and demonstrations on how to stitch numerous designs from each of the following families:
The Loop-D-Loop Family
The Lines and Angles Family
The E’s, W’s and Loaves of French Bread Family
The Golden Arches and Igloos and Court Jester Hats Family
Adapting the Free Motion Foot (instructions and demonstration of how to convert a closed toe free motion foot to an open toe foot)

If you want an idea of the specific designs that are covered in this DVD, click on the free download section and print out drawings of designs covered in the DVD!

Thanks for being so patient during the editing process and I hope this DVD is as well received as the last one was!

Dyeing Heavy Threads

February 4th, 2007

If you’ve never dyed fabrics before, I recommend that you read “The Lazy Dyer” section of Melody Johnson’s blog, found at
http://fibermania.blogspot.com
(In fact, this blog should be part of your daily reading routine, as you will learn endless valuable knowledge about many aspects of quilting, color and design.) But I digress…on to our thread dyeing journey!

This lesson refers to dyeing only threads made from natural fibers, (i.e. cottons, rayons, silks.) I use procian MX dyes and these are available from many sources, I usually purchase mine from Dharma Trading Company or Prochem. They will come as a powder and you will need to wear a face mask over your nose and mouth only during the portion of the process when the dye powder is open to the air (i.e. when you are measuring and mixing it). Once you’ve mixed your dyes and they are in a liquid state, the dyes are safe to breathe. You should wear heavy rubber gloves and clothes you don’t care about throughout the entire process, as these dyes are permanent and even though you will be careful, these dyes tend to get into places you don’t intend for them to go!

Step 1 is preparing your thread to be dyed. I don’t prewash my thread, (I point this out because you WOULD need to prewash your fabric unless you were dyeing prepared for dyeing fabric), but you need to get your thread into a state where it is dyeable. See the pic below to understand:

hpim1540-rs.jpg

You need to transform it from a ball to a skein so the fibers will have a good surface area exposed. You can do this by wrapping it around the edge of a table or using a skein winder:

hpim1565-rs.jpg

Once it’s in a skein, I place 4-5 strings in a figure of eight wrap around in various places on the skein and I make this wrap- around LOOSE so that it helps maintain the integrity of the skein but will be loose enough that my dye will easily make contact with all parts of the skein.

hpim1542-rs.jpg

In this next picture, I’m showing you some threads which are commercially available already in the skeined state. These are cottons or silks or rayons available from Valdani. I hope you are seeing that you can dye threads which will fit in your top needle and you can also dye fibers which are REALLY big and may have cool slubs or whatever, and these would be great for couching onto the quilt surface! I point this out because there’s a whole exciting world of fibers out there!

hpim1543-rs.jpg

(Yes, you also see a pack of Wright’s piping. I threw that puppy in so you’d know that you can overdye commercial piping as well. This is something that I definitely WOULD prewash, and I just prewash my fabrics and piping in my regular commercial washing machine detergent.) You can also overdye solid or variegated large or small sizes of commercially available pearl cotton skeins.

Next, you want to soak your threads/fibers in a water/soda ash solution. I mix up 1/2 cup of soda ash in about 5 gallons of warm water. I don’t actually measure this out, it’s all done by eyeball. Drop your fibers in, making sure they are totally immersed and let them soak for at least 15 minutes. (I sometimes leave them in for 10-15 hours, so don’t worry about going over the 15 min minimum). See them soaking here:

hpim1546-rs.jpg

Now you’re ready to mix up your dyes. Put on your mask! I mix 1 TBSP of dye powder to 2 cups of hot water. After you’ve put your dye powder into your measuring cup, add about 1/4 cup of hot water and stir until the dye has dissolved. Then add the remainder of the hot water and stir. I pour this into squirt bottles but you can just pour it into an old plastic cup if you don’t have the squirt bottles. Do this for all the colors you want to use but make sure you clean out the measuring cup and spoon each time so you don’t inadvertently mix colors. Once you’re done mixing the dyes, remove the mask and you are ready to have some fun!

Remove your threads from the soda ash solution and squeeze out excess water. They will be damp, but you don’t want them WET. Now you want to arrange a skein so that the fibers are exposed, so spread out the skein so it forms a giant “O.” I do this on either a plastic tote lid or on pieces of flat cardboard that I have covered with contact paper (this way you can wipe it off and reuse this surface many times for future dyeing/painting). See pic below:

hpim1547-rs.jpg

Now squeeze out a small amount of dye onto part of the skein. I am doing a variegated color scheme here, so I place a few dabs of color interspersed by no color. I use a cheapo foam brush to pat these areas and make sure the dye has made contact with all the threads in these zones. (Make sure you do this step, because you will be totally bummed out if you find out down the road that you have areas that have no dye!) Now you want to add your second color. Squeeze out small amounts of dye color #2 in the “blank zones.” Using a second foam brush, pat the dye in these areas but avoid touching any areas where the colors are mixing for now. Once this has been done, set aside these 2 foam brushes and declare each one as being specific only for the color you “patted” with it. (This is a good rule to remember when you’re dyeing-you only want to mix colors on the piece you’re working on, so be careful not to inadvertently “contaminate” colors where it’s not your intention to do so). See pic below:

hpim1549-rs.jpg

hpim1552-rs.jpg

Now, using a 3rd foam brush, pat the areas where the colors are blending. Remember, the only reason we’re doing this patting thing is to make sure there aren’t some “hidden” fibers who aren’t getting exposed to the dye. Once done here, put this fiber tray somewhere safe to sit. If it’s warm, I place it outside on the driveway and wait for it to dry. Most dyers I know cover their threads or fabric w/plastic but I don’t and I seem to get good colors anyway. If it’s NOT hot outside, (like now…it was about 15 degrees outside and maybe 55 in the garage when I did this), I just let it sit for at least 4 hours. If I’ve used turquoise as one of my colors, I leave it alone for at least 24 hours or I don’t get as vivid of a color. Pic below shows some threads batching last weekend:

hpim1559-rs.jpg

And next pic shows some fabrics batching alongside them:

hpim1560-rs.jpg

If you want solid colored threads, you can do immersion dyeing. Take your wrung-out soda-ash soaked skein and just drop it into the dye cup and walk away. The pic below shows some commercial piping soaking:

hpim1554-rs.jpg

(If you dye threads by immersion, make sure they’re totally immersed. I let some of the piping pop out because I wanted some variegation).

Once you’ve let your threads sit in dye long enough, you’re ready to wash them out. You can wash them out by hand but I don’t do this anymore because it takes too long and it’s messy. I wash mine in the washing machine using my commercial detergent. You don’t want to end up with a mass of tangled threads, so I place mine in pieces of old pantyhose. Place your first skein in the foot of a pantyhose and then tie a knot above it, making sure NOT to get any of the threads caught in the knot. Do the same thing with each skein so that you end up with a long “beaded” looking pantyhose as below:

hpim1562-rs.jpg
Do you see that long “empty” area in the middle? That’s because there’s a long run in the pantyhose in that portion and I didn’t want to put a skein in an area with a run…I did that once and when I took it out of the washer, some of that skein had wormed its way out and I ended up ith a tangled mess of thread that had beautiful color but had to be thrown out! Lesson: knot off any area involved with a run and DON’T USE IT!!

Wash 3 times in the wash…2 times is probably enough but I wash my fabrics and threads 3 times just to play it safe. Place in the dryer for awhile…they will never come out of the dryer completely dry since they’re wadded up. When done, cut a small hole in each section with scissors to remove each skein, making sure you cut in an area where you WON’T cut some of the thread. They will still be damp. I am excited by this step, feeling a need to see my colors immediately, so I grab a blow dryer and do a preliminary mini-dry for a couple minutes. Next, I hang them over a doorknob, (1 skein per doorknob) for 2-3 days to make sure they’re TOTALLY dry before I wind them onto a spool. (You don’t want to take a chance and wind them if they’re even just a teensy bit damp or you could get mildew and this will weaken your fibers). Once dry, hand wind them onto a spool, (I throw the skein over one bent knee and sit on the couch and hand wind while I’m doing something mindless like watching tv), and you are ready to get stitching! Some of last weekend’s harvest:

hpim1563-rs.jpg

Notice the nice subtle variegation-enough to keep things interesting but not harsh enough to be jarring or distracting. Also know that these were dyed using dyes that were mixed up 3 months ago and sitting in the fridge all this time.