Stem

"Blade"

4" x 6"

Snow-dyed and hand-dyed cottons, pieced, fused, cotton threads

The Creative Cue for this week is "stem."  I thought of "stem the tide," "stem the flood," and slang for a lovely leg, but since it's going to be in the 40s this weekend, a blade of grass peeking up from the ground seemed most appropriate.  

This is a postcard quilt.  Leave a comment on this post before March 10th and I will drop it in the mail addressed to the commenter whose name my DH draws out of a hat on that day.

I Have a Cookie for You...

Last week's Creative Cue was "cookie."  It immediately brought to mind a story about my younger son.  When he was about 6 or 7, we were at the kiddie pool watching his little sister splash around.  There was a little girl who was maybe 4 or 5 who kept cajoling my son to come and play with her.  She showed him all the toys she had lined up on the edge of the pool, but he wasn't interested.
Finally, she summoned up her best gamine smile and with her most playfully mischievous voice said, "I have a cookie for you."
I nearly fell off the chair laughing.  My son was not tempted.  But now, whenever one of us is trying to induce another to do something, we say, "I have a cookie for you."

Yippee Skippy!

Look what I got in the mail!

I've been working on some top secret projects lately -- and I can't show mine (um, because they're not finished), but I can show the ones I received from others.These beauties are known as Crazy Quilt 4x4s (CQ 4x4s).  They are four inch pieced and embellished bits of art.  I am involved in a trade with 15 other artists and I will post pictures of mine after I mail them out.  In order (I hope -- I'm still having trouble figuring out where things are going to end up after I click "PUBLISH POST" -- I really wish blogger would enter the 21st century and have a WYSIWYG compose window.)  Anne Marie from Canada did the blue and gold one, Cheryl from WY did the one with the dragonfly, 

Sandy D from VA created the one with the snowflake rays and Beth near Chicago did the other snowflake one.

Oh, and I finished my nursery rhyme challenge quilt, but I can't post it yet, so here are a few sneak peaks:

Snow Dye Parfait Results

I brought the parfait bucket into the house and let it batch on top of a heater vent in the family room under the lemon tree overnight.  By the next afternoon, the snow was almost all melted and all the water and dyes had drained into the stuff at the bottom of the bucket.

I rinsed and washed the fabrics.  They don't look anything like the fabrics Shirley had.

I'm pretty sure that these are in order from bottom to top as they were layered in the bucket (again, with the shoddy note-taking).

Each layer of fabric took on some of the the color that it sat on top of and then got more color from the dye above as it dripped through the snow.

I like these -- I think it would be worth an experiment to try it using a more limited palette of color, such as yellows with orange and reds, maybe blues, purples and magenta, or blues and yellows together.

Probably because the snow dripped through all the layers as it melted, there was very little dye left to wash out -- the second rinse had no color in it.  The liquid at the bottom of the bucket was pretty dark.

The top layers had the best patterning and color, so I think that fewer layers would be a good idea also. 

Snow Dye Parfait

Shirley, a cyber-friend who blogs here, posted some pictures of some wonderful snow dyes that  looked like they had veins like marble or granite.  She said that her mother had done them.  She kindly shared the directions with Beth who shared them with me.

I took those directions and combined them with the technique from Terri Stegmiller of Three (then Two) Creative Studios for One Bucket Dyeing and came up with the idea of Snow Dye Parfait (I'm really sick of snow and we just keep getting more; I do this so I don't go snow-insane).  

I set some containers into the bottom of a bucket and cut a piece of snow-fencing (that I lifted from a construction site a while ago to use for a dye-painting resist) to set on top of the containers so the fabrics would not sit in the excess liquid.   Then I  layered the soda-soaked fabrics in the bucket and poured a different color of dye on each layer of compacted snow, remembering color-mixing rules so I didn't get mud-colored fabrics.

I let the whole thing hang out overnight in the garage.  The temperature is around 30 degrees farenheit, so the snow was kind of slushy and packed well.

From the bottom up, I used Sun Yellow, Sapphire, Grape, Boysenberry, Golden Yellow, and Turquoise dyes in this order with another dribble of turquoise on the very bottom layer.  It really does look like a delicious snow cone.  Makes me think of summer...

Next post:  the results.

Snowy Monday Design Wall

Today my design wall is a hodge podge of stuff.  The sparkly chickens are still there, the couple of blocks that I started for my piecing club and those painted fish occupy the lower portions.  Off to the right is an unfinished piece inspired by my cyber-friend Judi at Approachable Art.  It includes regular hand-dyes (by me) and some of my snow-dyes.  As I sew the strips together, I have been adding more strips.  They're quite narrow -- one to two inches wide, so they finish out at 1/2 to 1 inch.  I like the edges  staggered, so I'm going to have to figure out how to finish them without losing that effect.  If you would like to see what is going on on other people's design walls, click here.

Continuation of the Life Cycle of the Snow Dye

Here I present the pupa stage of the snow-dye.  For this session, I mixed up lemon yellow, golden yellow, fuchsia, grape, turquoise and some black.

     This half yard was folded in half an scrunched with fuchsia and turquoise dyes poured over -- it's a little too pink for me -- I will probably over-dye it with a little golden yellow.

The whole yard was folded and scrunched with dyes poured over in a rainbow sequence.

This one was scrunched and twisted with dyes randomly poured over.  I like the depth the black dye lends.

This half yard is yellow, turquoise, and black -- there is a little orange showing, I wonder if I dripped a little fuchsia on it, or if that's the golden yellow with the black (someday I should learn to take better notes).    

 The whole yard was accordion folded with yellow, turquoise and black with a couple of drips of very diluted fuchsia or grape. -- I like this one -- it looks like a canyon or a mountainside to me.

This one was accordion folded in the center of the fabric and the ends were scrunched. Turquoise, yellow, purple -- those are great lavender tones in between the "trees."  

I am saving the "adult" phase of the life-cycle for later -- a snow-dye cannot become an adult and realize its full potential until it is made into something.  It comes into its own only when made part of a larger thing.

"By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece."

-Miguel de Cervantes 1547 - 1616