Day 12 - Wrapping Up Quilt Camp

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and it's time to wrap up quilt camp for another year.  Sue will be leaving Monday so it will be up to Elizabeth to carry on as she remains in NH through mid-October.  Here are some photos that kind of sum up what we have accomplished in the last 2 weeks.

On the left is Elizabeth's set of yardage she dyed.  On the right are pieces that were first printed with color magnet and then dyed.  The lighter pieces are some that were in dye a few days old that was pretty well spent.

Sue's dyed and discharged pieces are on the left, her mostly solids on the right.

Above are some color magnet pieces, and below, some that were printed with thickened dye.

Sue dyed a T-shirt with black cherry dye; it's taken a few days to get through the wash out process.

The two pieces below are failed sun prints that were salvaged by adding other types of printing - wooden block prints and thermofax screens.  You can see a bit of the sun prints in the background.

The new technique we tried this year was wet cyan.  Cyanotype is a form of sun printing, where the fabric is pre-treated with chemicals and then with exposure to sun, a blueprint of the resist item appears.  Traditional cyanotype is done with dry fabric.  In wet cyan, the fabric is spritzed with a soda ash solution and water before being exposed to the sun and produces more interesting backgrounds and color variation.  After some initial test pieces, the second round produced better results.

Since it was our last day, we took a trip into Wolfeboro for a little shopping and of course some ice cream.

And finally, it is time to clean up the dye pots and load the car.  Hope you enjoyed following along on our quilt camp adventures!

Quilt Camp, Days 8-11

Where did the time go?  Didn't realize we'd missed so many days on the blog.  Over the last 4 days, we've had studio time (more dyeing,etc.), went to the Keepsake Quilting warehouse sale, went to a Moose Festival in northern New Hampshire, and spent more time in the studio.  Let's catch up.

We've been creating fabrics - first dyeing, then adding pattern and texture by printing with various methods as shown in the previous post.  Here are some more of the completed fabrics.

Elizabeth has spent time at the embroidery machine to stitch out these outline images that will be colored in with Inktense pencils.

On Thursday we went to the Keepsake Quilting warehouse sale.  The warehouse is about a mile up the road from the shop.  We couldn't get into the parking lot at the warehouse, so we went on to the shop where there was a shuttle van taking people back and forth to the sale.  We waited about 30 minutes for our ride.  Fabric was priced at $5 a pound (about 3 yards).  Yardage was laid out on tables in one of the tents; you had to buy the whole piece, no cutting.  There were also boxes and boxes containing smaller pieces and scraps.  Two other tents contained kits, patterns, packaged backings, wool pieces, you name it.  These appeared to be leftovers from the catalog.  Above you can see the line for the shuttle to go back to the store.  It was shorter by the time we got in it, only about 15 minutes.

On Friday we drove about 3 hours north to Colebrook, NH, for the Moose Festival.  Elizabeth's husband Bob wanted to go, and we were game to try something new.  The fact that it included a quilt show was a plus.  Other than that, it was a bit underwhelming.

The highlight for Bob was finding the micro brewery in town (emphasis on "micro") and having some Poutine (French fries topped with cheese curd and gravy).

Sue and Elizabeth checked out the quilt show in a local church.  The show was only on Friday for 4 hours, and quilts were draped over the pews of the church.

We found our way by following the sign on the truck.

Rocks seem to be the thing this summer.  We also saw some in Gloucester, VA a few weeks ago.

The Moose Fest had some craft and food vendors.  The picture on the bottom left shows the sheaf toss.  We saw the gentleman in the photo demonstrate; he picked up the "sheaf" with his pitch fork and tossed it over the bar attached to the ladder.  The ladder can be raised and lowered to move the bar.  We only saw the demo because the competition wasn't till later in the day.  Other aspects of the festival included a classic car show, helicopter rides, a moose calling contest, and cow plop bingo.  Elizabeth bought a bingo square; we'll let you know if she wins.  Oh, by the way, we didn't see any moose - only the two-legged variety.

We left Colebrook and headed east across Dixville Notch, just to say we'd been there.  This is the place that is first to vote in US presidential elections.  In the 2010 census, there was a population of 12.  There is a lovely lakeside Balsam Resort, but not much else (lots of green trees).  We stopped in the town of Errols at the L.L. Cote store - if you need it, they have it and if they don't have it, you don't need it.  Everything from hardware to clothing to shoes and boots to guns to convenience store food and ice cream.  You have to go pretty far to find the next store, so get it while you can!  From there we headed back south passing through the 13 Mile Woods (there was an actual sign); though that wasn't the end of the woods - that's mostly all there is up here!  On past Mt. Washington and through Conway and back to Melvin Village.  A long day.

Saturday was back to studio time. More on that in the next post.

Day 7 - More Studio Play

We have been busy creating fabrics with an eye to listing some in the Etsy shop.  After hand dyeing various colors (and testing to see what colors we like), we are adding texture to the mostly solid colors in several ways - using thermofax screens and other printing methods with discharge (taking color out), color magnet (two-toned dye), printing with thickened dye, and printing with paint.  Here are some results so far.

This is purple fabric that was discharged; you could use either side.  The grayish side is the side the discharge product was applied to; the redder side is the back side.

These 2 pieces had Color Magnet applied before dyeing.  It attracts more dye giving a two-tone effect to the fabric.

More discharged pieces; the resulting color after discharge is dependent on the dyes used.  If the dye is a mixture of multiple colors, you may get something unexpected.

Here is a piece of golden yellow during and after discharge.  After the product has been applied and dries, an iron with steam is used to effect the color change.  The more steam, higher heat, and longer it is applied, the more change you will see.  We wash the fabrics afterward to remove odor and any remaining product.

Here is another yellow piece shown previously.

Sue has also been working on some small painted pieces that may end up in a future quilt.  The inspiration for these was a class taken with Judy Coates Perez last year at Craft Napa.

They started out with various methods of applying paint to the fabric.  The next layer was done with wooden block printing and foam stamps.

Then thermofax screens of text and more natural elements completed the layers.

Stay tuned for more studio adventures!

Micro quilting and other techniques in miniature at World Quilts New England

When we went to the quilt show in Manchester last Friday, we noticed a wide variety of techniques used by the many quilters from around the world. There were techniques to create the fabric itself such as hand dyed fabrics and even a good number which highlighted hand printed fabrics, stamped as well as screened.  There were many techniques in the quilting from the big stitch to micro-quilting to whole cloth quilts that looked pieced because of the thread choices creating areas which appeared pieced, quilts with dimensions from techniques such as felting as well as trapunto, origami, embroidery, and other fabric manipulations.  The thread painting on some of the quilts was just stunning too.  Of special note where the quilts which used micro techniques from the tiniest applique to the tiniest of machine stitching, they were all done in spectacular ways.

This quilt depicts the four sisters in the Louisa May Alcott book, Little Women, created by Chieko Shiraishi of Japan.  She has titled it "To the Bright Future" because it depicts when the "sisters climb up the hill and talk about the future".  It hangs 77" across and 55" down. 

The details are stunning in this quilt.  It has great perspective in the landscape and the tiniest applique in the background.  Around the border are lovely crocheted flowers on top of patched neutrals which create a frame for the scene.

African Sunset by Claire Wallace was a lovely quilt due to the stunning machine quilt work.  Claire is inspired by the wire baskets woven by the Ndebele and even incorporated the shapes of the South African flag in her quilting.

Some of the quilts were whole cloth, painted and then quilted pieces.  These two, by Kimberly Lacy, used a metallic paint while still maintaining a subtle look.  Each of the painted ovals are between 1/4 and 1/2 inch wide.

Anabeth Dollins of Pittsburgh, PA made a quilt called "Halo Star" which incorporates very small pieces to make the star shapes.

She also added cross stitching patterns from her Slovak background at the borders.

The quilt below is 66 inches on each of the four sides and is also made from very small pieces.  It is by Joy Salvage of the United Kingdom. The title is "Union Jack Meets Log Cabin".

Look at the tiny 1/4 inch finished strips in this quilt.  You can tell from the 8.5 by 11 inch paper hanging next to it that the pieces are quite small.

Day 5 - Studio Play

Sunday was a day to rinse and launder a bunch of dyed fabric, but it was also "play in the studio" day.  We each went in several directions.  We mixed up 3 colors of thickened dye.  Elizabeth painted this piece with red, yellow and blue, allowing the colors to overlap and mix.  It still needs to be rinsed and washed to get out the excess dye.

She also spent some time adding texture to fabric using a gelli plate and various objects for the texture. 

One was bubble wrap.

She also used textured pieces of foam.

You can buy commercial gelli plates but Elizabeth opted to make her own with gelatin.

Here's a wavy texture printed on a light purple fabric.

Sue printed a few pieces of fabric with color magnet, which is a dye attractant.  When the fabric is dyed more dye is drawn to the printed parts so you end up with a two-tone fabric.

She also painted backgrounds on some small pieces.  This is the first layer of several.

And since the sun was shining, it was a good day for sun printing.  These are the two pieces she printed with natural objects.

Come back tomorrow to see what else we are doing!

Day 4 - Dyeing Results

A few days ago we started dyeing some fabrics, working with dyes on hand to create ROYGBIV, or the colors of the rainbow. Here is Elizabeth mixing up the dyes.

After the initial rinse, some of the pieces are hanging on the line.  We were racing a rain storm that evening, and decided we'd just let the rain help with the rinsing over night!

After more rinsing and washing with hot water and synthropol, we finally got to the end product.

These are the ROYGBIV colors (from right to left) - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

Elizabeth also tried out some other colors to see what they looked like.

This is Sue's set - same ROYGBIV colors as above.

These are 2 pieces that Sue dyed in a previous year with printing added. both done with discharge paste to take color out.  The blue is harder to see, but is done with a crackle pattern.  This piece was interesting in that the initial discharge turned purple with the addition of heat (ironing), but then faded to gray.  After washing, the discharged parts are a pale blue-gray.  The yellow turned out as hoped.  The spiral screen used here is a new one that will be available in the Etsy shop soon.

And here is the next batch that will get washed out later today.  Also on today's agenda: printing with thickened dye, maybe some gelli plate printing, and whatever else strikes our fancy.