Quilting and other Things

There have been some posts recently about how to check colour and value. One suggestion was a bit of a "Why didn't I think of that?" moment. -- When checking colours and values, don't just take a photo of the WIP, take the photo in B&W to check the value as well. If your camera doesn't have a B&W setting, then use the computer to switch the image to B&W. I took some pictures of some completed and one in-progress quilt. It's been interesting looking at the comparison of colour and B&W photos. The first pair is a small wallhanging called Hooray for Bleach! The guild challenge was the red paisley, the dark purple and the red. The theme was Night & Day. I was about to put the fabrics into the stash and give up. Then I remembered a bleaching lesson. Took small pieces of each one to see what would happen. They bleached very nicely. The next pair is a mystery quilt from an all-night class. We were to bring a stack of pre-trimmed FQ. I pulled them...

I spent part of this afternoon starting to stitch Belling the Cat. This is going to take a while. There are 34 mice and its taking about 20 or 30 minutes to stitch and steam a mouse. I've done six. Here's what one of them looks like with the stitching: There's some pink at the edge of the ear to add to all the mice as well as eyes (on most of them). Callee did require a cuddle part way through one mouse. However, most of the time she spent curled up on the pack-sack. Also spent some time stitching the hearts on the $10 quilt and making a postcard:

A couple of years ago, Mom, Karen & I took a fabric dyeing class out at Hobby Horse. It was fun so we bought some additional supplies. Last Sunday afternoon I finally used mine. I had planned to do it the week before but discovered I didn't have enough PFD cloth. I thought I had lots of fabric. Then I re-read my notes and discovered I was 10 metres short! The notes said 25g of dye needed 1 litre of chemical water. 1 litre of dye does about 4 metres of fabric. I had 4 colours therefore 16 metres of fabrics. I should have also added up all the 1/4 cups and 1tbsp measures to see how much dye I had listed in the "recipes". I think I was actually short more material than initially thought. My colours were all Procion MX dyes -- 504 Sky Blue, 208 Bright Yellow, 405 Hot Pink and 708 Black. I did a graduated run of 8 of each of the colours then a rainbow run but mixed black into the colours as well (still sticking with just two colours in a bag). At the end, I mixed equal par...

This is Miss Callee. She's decided that curling up with her toys is a good spot to sleep in the evenings. She works hard to keep me in line and train me as well as she has my sister trained.