Catching up is hard to do...

I was really lax in my posting last week as I was spending a lot of time getting ready for Saturday's Dyeing to get together Day. Let me tell you that all the preparations were well worth it. I have so many photos to share with you that it will have to be a 2 part post. First of all we could not have asked for a nicer day. It was cool and overcast which might not sound so great but being outside you don't want one of those scorching hot days. It was just right, warm enough for the dyes to work well and we didn't melt in the sun. It was wonderful.

We were trying to do a head count which was hard as there were people here there and everywhere. I think we had 22 counting The Help,(Tina, Mom P. and me). We had the activity stations broken up into 4 areas. Tina ran the fabric marbleing station which everyone seemed to really enjoy. Everytime I looked over in that direction the area was crowded with ladies around the table. I don't have any photos of that. Sorry.

We had a table for the ladies to decorate the shoes that they brought. Our quilt show's theme is "If the Shoe Fits" and we will have shoes on the stage so we want to have some fun with that, decorate the shoes in some fun and outrageous ways. Here is a photo of some shoes being worked on

Berdella and Mary.
I will post my shoes eventually. I plan on using shoes I get from Goodwill and some nail polish and googly eyes. You will have to wait to see that. I am excited.

Here are some random shots of the ladies although it is not everyone. I am sorry we just could not keep up with everything and taking pictures. Thanks to Tina we did get a few. Rosalee and Lianna.

Berdella, Janet, Anita and Ann.

Sally, Cindy, Edith.

Carolyn, Charyn, and Peg.

We also had a table set up on the back porch for tracing off Hawaiian designs to make a pillow cover or to use as desired. I don't have a photo of that either. I never made it up to the back porch except to eat. LOL.

The most fun that I had was doing the ice dyeing. I have never done that before but have read several articles on it. So we had to try it out. The only draw back to that is that it must sit for 24 hours to "marinate", so the ladies couldn't take their pieces home with them on Saturday. I am left with the job of figuring out who's was who's and get it to them. I think the efforts are well worth it though. You will have to come back tomorrow to see the actual fabrics revealed but here is how we did it.

First of all I decided to use the wheelbarrow as I thought we would have a lot of fabric, and we did, and that was the only tub I had that was big enough. So I washed it out good the day before, no need to worry about rust or small holes in the wheelbarrow as it gets lined with plastic before anything gets added to it. We soaked our pieces of fabric in the soda ash water and scrunched it up somewhat loosely. Then a layer of ice gets put over that. I used a 10 lb. bag of ice for a small wheelbarrow. Once the ice is in place you take fiber reactive dye powder, I use Procion X dyes, and sprinkle a generous amount of dye powder over the entire surface of the ice. You want to use lots of colors. I covered that up with plastic and let it sit for 24 hours. We did not have a lot of sun Saturday or Sunday so when I checked it after the 24 hours there was still a little ice lying on top. I moved the wheelbarrow into the sun and let it sit another 2 hours. I then took the fabrics out of the wheelbarrow and washed them in hot water with regular detergent, dryed them in the dryer and hung them on the line to take photos, which I will share tomorrow. Here are the photos of this process. Ice dyeing in the wheeelbarrow.

Adding the dyes to the wheelbarrow.

Here is what the ice dyeing tub looked like after 24 hours of sitting. The ice has melted and the colors have all done there thing.

Here is the reveal of the ice dyeing fabrics. I only took a couple pictures as I took out a few of the pieces from the wheelbarrel. I needed more hands to take the pictures and handle the fabrics.

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I also dyed a backing fabric for my latest quilt project which is a blue and white quilt top. This is what it looked like hanging on the line. I have washed it and it is not quite as dark blue nor are the white areas white white, they are more of a bluish white. That is ok. I am still going to use it for my backing. I hope to get it quilted up over the next 2 weeks.

So you will need to come back and check out how the fabrics in the wheelbarrow turned out tomorrow. I think success was had by all those who came. We had a great day, great food and lots of laughter and sharing. Another successful dyeing day.

Have a great day and be thankful for good friends, good times together and good food. I sure am. It was a wonderful weekend.