It Isn't Easy Being Green

I needed to dye some new greens for an upcoming project and you might say I got carried away. It's hard to tell from the pictures , but this is 40 yards of fabric, 8 different colors and six gradations of each. Each piece is 3/4 yards. What you also can't see in the pictures is the luscious mottling in the fabric.

I spent the better part of Saturday dyeing, the better part of Sunday and part of Monday washing and ironing. I think I have enough greens for awhile. I used ProChem Mx Reactive Dyes.

Chartreuse and Olive


Grass Green and Bright Green. I didn't realize that these would be so close in color. I would have only dyed one.


Leaf Green and Evergreen. These are not as similar as they look in the picture.


These two are my own mixes of yellow and turquoise to get Yellow Green and Lime Green.


Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm going to my niece's again and got off easy by only having to make a pumpkin pie.

Acceptance

Yea! I finally got something juried into a show. After a string of rejections lately, I was about ready to throw in the towel. So it felt really good today when I got my letter in the mail telling me that I was accepted. Unfortunately, I can't show you the quilt, but it's one of my painted cabbages, "Mon Petit Chou". This show, the New England SAQA No Holds Barred, stipulates that the quilt not be shown on a blog or website previous to the show. They want it to be fresh and new to the viewers. The show will be at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA from January 20- April 19 and is to showcase the best of New England contemporary art quilts.

I was happy to get this little boost to my deflated ego. I ordered some new dyes today and plan to dye this weekend. All greens for a new quilt I have in mind. I'll show the results when I'm finished.

Wordless Wednesday

Redo

Here's another version of the quilt I showed in my last post. This time the stripes and squares are going in the correct direction. I chose the colors to go coordinate with the leaf/paper strip that I had. I just made final plans to spend the month of March in Arizona; maybe that had something to do with my color choices. I quilted this one differently, too. I did spirals on the brown fabric to blend with the circles in the fabric and pebbles in the gold silk Dupioni. I did parallel lines again in the orange silk, but this time on the diagonal.

I had it all quilted and trimmed and when I put it up on my design wall I noticed that the stripe is not perfectly parallel to the seam. Argh!!!! Why didn't I draw a placement line for the strip instead of just eyeing it. Do I want to spend anymore time on this? Is it worth it? If I decide it is, I can always cut off the orange triangle and sew on a new one to be correct.

A detail of the quilting and you can see a bit of that leaf/paper strip. I'm not sure which one I like better.

New Work

No, this is not a new quilt and you've seen it before. It was made for the Gray Plus One challenge and is called No Elephants Here. (long story behind the name). The quilt measures 18" x 24".

A fiber art group to which I belong, FANE (Fiber Artists of the North East), has monthly challenges. This month we were to visit a previous quilt that we had made, isolate one section and make that section into a new quilt.

Here's my new piece measuring 12" x16", almost three times as big as the isolated section. I didn't realize how I had screwed up until it was all finished. If you look at the isolated section, you'll see that the strong line on the right hand side should be parallel to the angled line, not perpendicular. And I made the two squares in the same direction. The bold stripe on the right is an interesting piece of fiber that I bought this summer. It is two inches wide and came on a roll. It it some kind of pressed leaves and/or paper on a paper base. Very cool stuff, whatever it is. The hand dyed rayon threads couched down next to it were bought at the same time to coordinate. They are such yummy colors. The solid colors are silk Dupioni. Be sure to click on the picture to see details.

I'm going to start another one today with the correct orientation and a different color. I have more of that paper/leaf fiber in tan/brown/gold. I'll post it when it's finished.

It's the first bit of sewing I've done in a long time and it felt good to be doing something again. I've been in such a creative slump or funk. Perhaps it has something to do with my recent rejections from shows......Quilt National, Visions, Schweinfuth, Lark Book, SAQA. I know that they all had a very small percentage of acceptance, and lots and lots of people try and never get in, but it still hurt. Quilt National gets over 1,000 entries for 83 spots. I have since entered my three QN entries into three other shows. I still think that they're good quilts and hopefully some other venue will, too. You haven't seen them here, but you will if they get accepted.

The End

of the growing season here in CT.

We finally had a killing frost and what was a beautiful Mandevilla plant now looks like this. I took advantage of a nice day earlier in the week and got rid of most of my potted annuals on my deck, but this one still looked so pretty that I couldn't bear to throw it away. The tomato plants really look sad, so droopy and disheveled. We're supposed to get a few nice days mid- week so I'll finish every thing up then.

I've been sewing, too, and finished a small piece yesterday. I'll post it tomorrow so please come back.

Keeping my Kindle

I decided to keep my Kindle. I went online and found the answers to all of my questions. You can highlight a word and the definition will show up at the bottom of the page. A great feature. You can look up a word or phrase and find out where else it was mentioned in the book; that takes care of the flipping back issue. Actually it's much easier then flipping back in a real book. You can take notes and highlight sections.

So I ordered this snazzy leather cover in my signature lime green. It has a small light for reading in the dark. And I bought another book. It's way too easy to order a book. You can do it right from the Kindle, a nice feature if you're not near your computer.

Kindle

I've been thinking about it for a while and now I've gone and done it. I bought a Kindle. Last week when the book I needed ASAP for a book club was not available at the library and not in the book store, I broke down and ordered the Kindle with the book on it. I have 30 days to decide if I want it. Of course, if I return it I would lose the postage and handling (and I paid extra to get it in two days) and the book that's on it.

What I like about it......It is lightweight and small and easy to read from. You can adjust the print to any size you want. It has two built in dictionaries, although it's not as cool as the dictionary on my Mac. It lays flat, so it's nice to use when eating (no having to hold the pages open) It would have been great to use while getting my nails done today, but I don't have another book on it. If reading outside, the pages don't blow around. It will be great for travel and use on the plane and I can have as many books as I want on it, without any more weight. I don't have to worry about storing all the many books I buy. I end up giving most of them away.

What I don't like.....I frequently like to look back and check on something that I've read. Maybe there is a way, but I only know how to go back one page at a time. You can't tell what page you're on because it depends on the size of the font. It does tell you what percentage of the book you've read. I can't pass on a book that I love to a friend to share.

So the jury is still out. Does anyone else have one who would like to give their opinion, yea or nay?