I love Indigo!

Now, I never took a liking to hand dyeing - either product or process - but I have fallen in love with indigo. It's a quite magical and much more immediate process where you never know exactly what results you are going to get. The final colour/pattern depends on the basic fabric - silk, cotton or linen (wool works too), how you scrunch or tie it up, how long it is in the dye-bath and how many times you dip it.

Over-dyeing coloured or printed fabrics produced some interesting results too. I have an idea for a Modern indigo quilt floating about in my head using this severely limited palette. Must go and finish my stuff for Festival of Quilts so I can start on this!

Dyeing

Acid dyeing on wool. Not Modern, but still interesting.. Lots more about this on my Other Blog (click the picture)

As promised (did you hear the swearing?)

Well I finished trimming my blocks and proceeded to lay them out only to find that I had managed to make three of the blocks wrong - much swearing, cursing and unpicking ensued. I also missed two blocks off my making list completely. Once all these were remedied I think the end result was worth the fight:

The basic pattern for these blocks is available on my website (click on the photo to go there)

Oakshott Galore!

That lovely Michael Oakshott has been at it again. Every now and then he has a clearout and sends us a box or two of oddments - it's like being a kid at Christmas!

Being swamped by a veritable mountain of fabric is a little daunting, but by sorting into colour heaps we managed to reduce chaos to a rather delicious order. This lot is destined for student packs, samples for Michael and generally drooling over.

Sanity Questioned?

It is at this point in a project that I really start to question my sanity

126 blocks trimmed - only another 4 to go! Then I need to lay them all out and make sure I have got the colours in the right places or the 3-D illusion won't work. Fingers crossed. I will post later in the week...if it works...if it doesn't you'll probably be able to hear the swearing, wherever you are.

Yellow Brick Road

Having fun making samples of a different colourway for a pattern I am writing at the moment

Yellow Brick Road in orange & purple with a dash of lime green just for kicks! The original was much more sedate:

The back door is open, the sun is streaming in and I am sewing - all is right with the world

TWIN PEAKS (aka Trouble & Strife)

Had a fight on my hands with this quilt, but I finally got it done - if it wasn't for such a good cause I would have given up on it much earlier

Not the best bit of quilting I have ever done, but have a look at the SIBLINGS TOGETHER blog to see why I perservered.
The free downloadable PDF version of the pattern itself is now up on the MQGB website. CLICK HERE to visit the patterns page