Cool bag for a hot iron

I love teaching sewing classes at school but one of the issues I have at the end of the lesson is what to do with a hot iron.

My friend Kate had this cool bag that when unfolded is an ironing mat and folded is a holder for a hot iron.

I borrowed it from her and made my own one:

Kate's bag is the red one and mine is the black one

Unfolded, it's an ironing mat

sides held closed with velcro

I had a quick look at Spotlight for the heat resistant fabric but it was quite pricey so I bought a cheap ironing mat from Daiso ($2 shop) and that did the trick too!

Thanks for the great idea Kate!

p.s I have my 200th blog post coming up so watch this space for something special!

Happy Quilting!

dyed fabric wallet/rusted fabrics

The other day I did some more fabric rusting with the items I begged from the local bike shop.  I had the cogs for a while but it took a while to get the pieces apart.  (Thanks to our visitor Jan and my hubby for the brute strength)

Rusted bike chain

Tuesday was a public holiday in Singapore (Deepavali) and so the kids had the day off.  My daughter Brooke and I spent the day making a purse from the fabric she dyed last week.

It's nice to see the hand dyed fabrics being made into something rather than looking pretty on my shelf!

Definitely will be doing more of these!

Happy Quilting!

Dyeing is contagious!

On Saturday my daughter Brooke sat her SAT exam.

When she got home from her exam she spied the left over dye from my dyeing session last week and decided that throwing about a bit of dye is the perfect stress reliever! Funny how contagious this dyeing thing is!!!!

Liquid dye on ice

Close up of Liquid dye on ice

Then I dyed a couple more of the Onsies

Today I was busy making a block for a friend  who loves Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  I think I quite like this mosiac style block! I hope she likes it!

Happy Quilting!

Fabric, fabric and more fabric

My fabric arrived this week from Hancocks of Paducah and I am excited about starting  new quilt/s.

40 fat 1/4's Mod Century by Jenn Ski

Yesterday it was time to break out the dyes and fill some of the back orders from the British Club.

2 sets of clear brights

2 shibori dyes

Also I had done some bleaching earlier in the week and these were overdyed.

overdyed with red and purple

Needs to be redyed as I wanted it to be more green

3 x Onsies were also on the dyeing list:

All this dyeing was made much easier by the fan that I got for my birthday last week.  The kitchen was only a balmy 29 degrees instead of the usual 40 degrees.  Very pleasant!

Also for my birthday was a book by Pokey Bolton:

Oh what a great week!

Happy Quilting!

Birthday blocks!

My last post was about the British Club Challenge - and for those that would like to see photos of the quilts, check out the ANZA Quilters.

This Sunday it is my birthday and the ladies from the ANZA Quilt group surprised me on Tuesday with Birthday blocks that they had made in my favourite colours.

LOVE the black white and red!

Thank you all for the lovely blocks - can't wait to put them together!

Last Saturday we had our school carnival and my friend Jesse made this gorgeous quilt for the raffles.....

and Guess Who won the raffle!!!!!!!

Isn't this fabulous!

The last couple of weeks I had been trying to do some more fabric bleaching with a clorox bleach pen without much success.  I have done this before and it worked great but this time the bleach just dried on the fabric and nothing else.

I went and bought a new bleach pen and it worked wonderfully.  Maybe the bleach was just too old?

I will do a few more and then overdye them next time I do some dyeing.

Happy Quilting!

British Club Quilt Show

Tuesday was the quilt show at the British Club.  This is the one time of year when all the quilting groups in Singapore come lunch together and show off their quilts.  The quilts were great and varied greatly in colour and style.

This year seemed to be busier than last year and there were many more vendors there. It was great to  meet some of the other vendors and learn about what is available here in Singapore.  It was great to meet the guys from Schmetz needles and  from Ban Soon Sewing Machines.

My table with my quilt "red/purple woven" in the background

I had a great time and my hand dyed fabrics, postcards and christmas tags were well received.  The shibori dyes were a real hit!

A BIG THANK YOU to all who organised this event and also to those that bought fabrics/postcards/christmas tags from me.  I do hope you make something beautiful with what you bought and I hope I will get to see what you make from it. (maybe in next years show???)

I'm sorry I don't have photos of the other quilts as I had forgotten my camera (dumb I know!)

It was a fun day but very tiring.  I had a sewing class directly after this so by the time I got home I was shattered!  6.30pm and my lights were out!

I have a number of visitors coming next week and November so it's a good time to take a break from making postcards.

Happy Quilting!

Last chance for fabric postcards

Today was the last chance I had to make another postcard as tomorrow is the British Club Quilt Challenge.

Snow tree

I am soo excited about tomorrow.........

Happy Quilting!

Landscape postcards

Today was a great day to hole up in the sewing room and get creative:

The British Club Quilt exhibition is next week and I'm on the final stages of making fabric postcards.  Today I made 2 of the beach scene postcards, I love making these although they are quite fiddly to make and take quite a bit longer than the others.

This afternoon I have another sewing class.  Tuesday's class finally finished their bags this week.  The look on their faces was priceless!

Happy Quilting!

Yesterdays dyeing results

Here are the results for yesterdays dyeing session:

LOVE the boldness of these!

This one has black added to the colours

Fushia gradient

Turquoise gradient

Pity the change from light to dark was not a bit more subtle

Good even colour but needs to be brighter - I might redye

All in all I was quite happy with the results.  Dyeing is not an exact art and I learn something new everytime or how I would do something different next time.

My new fabric is on its way so hopefully I can get some more dyeing done in a couple of weeks.

Today I am off to ANZA Quilt Group!

Happy Quilting

The last of the fabric dyeing

Today I used up some of the dye that was left over from the dyeing session last week with my friend Jesse.

It seemed a good time to try some "dip" dyeing as this is something I have not done yet.

Set up 3 dye baths, Turquiose, Fushia and Lemon Yellow

Dip one end of a piece of fabric into the Turquiose ( about 2/5th of the way up the fabric)

Then dip the same end into the Fushia ( about 1/5th of the way up the fabric)

Dip the other end into the Fushia  ( about 2/5th of the way up the fabric)

Lastly dip the middle into the yellow covering some of the Turquiose and the Fushia.

You should end up with 6 colours:

Purple,Turquiose, Green, Yellow,Orange and Fushia

Lay flat to dry (I also added some black to the dyes for the last one to give muddier colours)

I also did some gradient (light to dark) with the Turquiose and the Fushia

Can't wait to see how these look when they are dry.  

Sadly that is the last of the fabric - I have to wait for new stock to arrive.

I REALLY wish I could get this PFD Pimatex here.  It is made in Malaysia (right next door) but I end up having to buy it via the USA and pay for lots of shipping.  Somehow, that just seems wrong !

Happy Quilting!

Friends to Dye with! - Ice Dyes

My friend Jesse came over today to do some fabric dyeing:

First we did 12 clear colour fat quarters.  These ones were given lots of "massaging" in the bag so as to get a more even colour and less mottling.

Next we did the "ice" dyeing - I have always loved what quilters in snowy climates could do with snow dyes but as there is no snow in Singapore, ice cubes would have to do:

Fabric on cake rack with ice on top

Sprinkle dye powder on top and wait for ice to melt (it was 38 deg today)

Love the texture on these

Next we did the "shibori" dyeing on the pvc pipe:

Fushia, orange, yellow and black

And lastly some green/black gradiants and a fushia/black piece:

What a great day - we gots lots done and it was great fun but boy was it hot in the kitchen!

I think next time we will close the outside doors and crank the aircon in the lounge up and hope some of the cool wafts into the kitchen.

Happy quilting!