A picture heavy Monday

Yep - loads of pictures today. Did some dyeing - finally - as I have had some stuff waiting to be done - a couple of babygros for a friend who has had a baby, and a complex cloth piece, mainly. Above is the complex cloth piece - a little darker than I had in mind, but still fairly lovely. I used a technique called "ruching", where I rolled the fabric up around a string and pulled really tight before applying dye. I think the effect here is very good - looks a bit like writing. As this complex cloth piece is for my surface embellishment group (rather than the dyeing group) I don't worry too much about it being a bit dark, as there are lots of options for the subsequent people who are working on the piece. The fabric belongs to Cobi.




And here are the promised babygros - it was getting a bit dark by the time I photographed the finished result, but they are a pale blue with pink, purple and brown designs. I did the designs first and then overdyed with a pale blue, because I thought there was too much white on them. The other shirt is for me - I bought a white French Connection t-shirt at a jumble sale, which had the motto "cool as FCUK" across the front in small, hot pink letters. Not being a white t-shirt person, I decided to actually make it cool. I think it works :) Hopefully, it will still fit, and not have shrunk in the dyeing process. And once the postal strike is over, the babygros will be off to their new home - somewhere far away, but I'm not saying where - it's a suprise...



Of course I had extra dye when I finished the shirts - I always do - so rather than save it (who knows when I'll get to dyeing again) I decided to do a colour wheel between three colours (mulberry, hot pink and brown rose) and a sort of casual gradation of the chocolate brown I had left (casual meaning in this instance that I didn't measure, just eyeballed it). I did a piece appromixately FE sized of each of the colour wheel pieces and a bit larger for the browns. Again, didn't measure, just cut some fabric off the bolt. Also, I had a number of plain white handkerchiefs left from the bag I got at the jumble sale (I cut all the interesting bits off the fancy ones and put the plain ones aside for dyeing) so I shoved one of those in each pot of the wheel as well - I'll use those pieces for postcard or art or journal quilt backgrounds, etc.



While all this dyeing was batching, I did some other work, too. I finished the quilting on the wallhanging [thanks to all of you who have left advice or tips on gripping the fabric better - I will be looking at some of these ideas and trying a few out] - decided to do a kind of flame/wavy line in most of the blocks in the centre. And I then added the faces on all of the small squares, once the radiating lines had been quilted. I think it came out very well, except that I really shouldn't have quilted the black first (I did know this at the time, but I was hoping it wouldn't matter too much. And it didn't matter TOO much, just a few tiny tucks on the back, but the batik on the back is very busy and doesn't really show. You can see the batik I've used on the back at the edges below. So it will have to do). Now just the binding and sleeve, and it will be finished. Hoorah.



And, once the wallhanging was finished, I even had time to make up one of the blocks for the October ladies in the birthday block swap - this one was for a 12" block, any design, with oriental fabrics and a black or black-on-black background. This is a simple, but I hope effective block. And as soon as the postal strike is over, it will be on the way to Christine.

And finally, there may be no postal delivery, but this arrived today anyway - from a non-postal carrier. I've been looking forward to it. If you haven't ever read Jane's blog - do.

Congratulations again on the book, Jane - well done.