"Today is a good day to Dye"!

After feeling like I haven't produced anything much in months - today was the day to get into some fabric dyeing.

Firstly I dyed 24 fat quarters using the clear bright colours:

Then I decided to dye some of the "onesies" that I had left over from last time.  I added some rubber bands and took dye from the bags of the above fat quarters.  I'm assuming that once  the soda ash mixture was in the bags that the dye was not as active as it should be anymore and so the colours of the onesies looked good until I washed them.   They are supposed to be bright and vibrant like the fat quarters but they looked more pastel instead.

Before washing

Oh well - lesson learned for next time!  They don't look too bad pastel either!

Lastly, I had some sickly mint coloured fabric that I had dyed last time and never liked the colour of, so......

You wrap it around a pole with string, scrunch it down and add blue and red dye.....

And the results are amazing! (and much nicer)

This week has been really great on the quilting front:
Tuesday was ANZA Quilt group
Wednesday went to my friend Jesse's house to ogle her beautiful fabric and quilts and check out her fancy Bernina machine.  Wednesday afternoon - sewing class - my student finished her first bag
Thursday was dyeing day and sewing class - my students are nearly finished their first bag

Yeah for sewing/quilting/dyeing/fabric ogling!

Happy Quilting!

Tie Dyeing Results

Here are the results for the tie dyeing that I did yesterday:

And something a little easier on the eyes!

Today I also went to the Schmetz distributor in Singapore and met with General Manager  Rajan Jain.  He was fabulous and helped me out with  a retailer of Schmetz Sewing Machine needles here in Singapore.  Thanks Mr Jain and it was nice meeting you!  Now I can catch up on the free motion quilting challenge without having to worry about  sewing machine needles that break all the time.  What a difference good tools can make!

Also it is the last couple of weeks that my quilts will be on display at "The Loft" Cafe in Chinatown.
The address is:

"The Loft Cafe"
1st floor
cnr Smith St and South Bridge Road

They do great coffees and waffles too!

Today I also managed to get the flickr slideshow working again on my blog.  Yippee

Yes it was a great day today!!!

Another Dyeing day

The last couple of days I haven't done much dyeing as I was finishing a friends quilt.  I really enjoyed finishing this other than I had a lot of trouble with my thread constantly breaking and breaking of sewing machine needles.  Spotlight didn't have my regular needles (schmetz) so I bought the Birch ones.  Boy did I ever regret that!

8 broken needles in  two weeks time!   Tomorrows job will be to find some proper needles!

Today I did another dyeing day seeing most of the tie dye from last week has already sold and it was a chance to test out the soda ash I bought.  I ripped up 15 yards of fabric and off I went.  Some of it is still washing and some will get washed later.

Tomorrow I will post the results......