Gaps

I just spent an hour or so looking through a couple of craft magazines looking for purples. I didn't find a great deal. Unfortunately when I tried to photograph the snippets I found, the camera shifted the colour back towards blue, so I couldn't capture the subtleties of colour. Here's the section of the colour wheel I'm focusing on: Even with the red-magenta spectrum in the pic the colours aren't coming up quite the way I see them. I guess that's a lesson in itself . . . and yes, there's also a lesson to be learned in how to adjust my photography, but that will have to be another day.

Restoration Process

A couple of Christmasses ago I made a doona (continental quilt) cover for a young friend. The front was pieced with several coordinating fabrics and the back was hand dyed to match. It was a hit and we spent some fun time making matching cushion covers. A couple of months ago, this treasured piece suffered a sad fate. It was in the wash-basket and caught the attention of a young cattle dog. The dog dragged it out into the yard and tackled it with his teeth and paws. You can imagine how unhappy J was when she found it some time later. Then came the inevitable, hard question: can it be fixed? The front had several small holes, which can probably be mended, but the back was the worst area of injury, with a huge gaping hole.

Just to complicate matters, the friend and her doona cover are in South East Queensland and I'm in Melbourne. After several phone consultations with her Mum, we decided to replace the whole back. That means dyeing a piece to match. It was so badly torn that ripping out a piece to send me as a sample was easy. It arrived in the mail yesterday. Meanwhile, I'd been searching for a suitable piece of cotton fabric. The store where I bought the original piece no longer stocks sheeting width cotton in the dress department where craft fabrics are kept. The assistants there suggested I try furnishings. They have sheeting fabric, but it's poly-cotton, not what I want for dyeing. "What about homewares? They might have a large cotton sheet you could use". No, homewares don't have 100% cotton sheets other than in a top-of-the-range sheet set which was beyond my budget.

I tried my dye suppliers, who sent me a lovely sample of sheeting width cotton, but then went off the air for several days last week. I have procion dyes mixed up right now ready to use, so the delay was just frustrating. In desperation yesterday I tried one of my favourite quilting stores. They had a bleached calico which looks ok. I brought it home last night and put it straight into the washing machine to wash out the sizing. This morning it's in the dye bath. I added the colour in several batches to give the interesting texture I'm after. The timer's just gone off to remind me to add the soda ash solution which will help to set the dye. By this evening I should have the job done. It will take quite a bit of rinsing, since it's such a large piece. Then it will go into the mail, back to Queensland to be stitched into the back of the restored doona cover. Woah, I bet that dog has no idea how much trouble he caused!

Flavour

These garlic and chilli stuffed olives were an impulse buy at the deli yesterday: I guess I'm still thinking about the olive colour--I'll confess, I was also just plain hungry when I went shopping! The reason I've included them in today's post--even after a healthy breakfast--is that it's a bit of a different take on a complementary colour scheme. Red and green are a classic complementary pair of colours, but in their pure form have the disadvantage of being potentially a bit too predicatable and, well, Christmassy. Toned down like this, though, there's still an exciting contrast, but also a bit more harmony. And in the taste bud department, the bite of the chilli contrasts beautifully with the smooth, slightly bitter olive flavour. Hmmm, something to think about while I knit today.

Design Workshop

I found yesterday's workshop at the Guild very worthwhile. The day started with a couple of inconveniences--I took my wheel along, on the bus and tram, only to find it wasn't needed. And my choice of pictures--which was very much needed--had been left at home. Oh well, sigh; take a deep breath and dive into the workshop.

We spent the morning blending coloured tops for a colour wheel--I can never have too many colour wheels. The next exercise was blending and matching colours from a marvelous coral reef photo.

In the afternoon we created a design board. We used it as a source to blend colours and textures to use as inspiration for creating yarns. Since I'd left my pictures at home, I chose some more from T's box of magazines. I stuck with my personal challenge to go outside my usual palette: I worked on mixing three colours--

• the deep dark brown of the lizard's belly: red and black with a hint of yellow;
• the olive green at the top left of the pic: citrus yellow and black--unexpected!
• and the burnt orange of the fried dumplings on the lower right: more red, yellow and black.

For someone who has tended to avoid using black in colour mixing, it was an enlightening experience. I bought a jar of black (Currawong) landscape dye before I went home to reinforce the lesson.

As often happens, by the time I was packing up to go home, my stuff appeared to have multiplied exponentially. T was kind enough to give me a ride home. As a bonus, we got to have a quick coffee and chat. I'm afraid I talked her ear off--it's been too long since we caught up. So, all in all a very worthwhile day. Today I'm exhausted and there's even more stuff on my table to be dealt with. Was it only last week I managed to get it all cleared!

Green, Green, Green and more Green!

Happy St Patrick's Day! I didn't plan it that way, but when I heard comments on the radio about Green and Irish music this morning, I thought it was a great coincidence.

Yep, I mixed up three more versions of Green yesterday and here they are: I suspect the differences won't show too well on the screen, but for your info, I added:

• marine blue and a bit of citrus yellow to one batch;
• just citrus yellow to the second batch
• just golden yellow (chamomile) to the third
• and the fourth piece I left alone.

I didn't label my experiments. I wasn't really trying to be scientific, but wanted to give myself some more options. I'm surprised at how little difference the over-dyeing made. Then again it was a printed fabric, which I'd already over-dyed once. I think I'll go with the version in the upper right hand corner. It has the green I want, plus enough of the yellowy-gold colour to pick up what's already in the quilt.

As for yesterday's other fabric, I'm having visions of bush scenes, and I've also got a collection of wild animal fabrics . . . stay tuned.

Decisions, Decisions!

Over the weekend I managed to do a bit of dyeing in amongst everything else. I was working on concocting the right colour for the border of my quilt. Here's what I came up with:

Now I need to choose, or try again.

I think I'm suffering from an excess of feedback! I took the fabric at the bottom and the quilt to the Neighbourhood House yesterday. I got some definite "YES" responses, and some equally definite "NOs". The other fabric was still on the line drying at that stage. I'm inclined to choose it, even though it's not quite the right colour. I do have plenty of that fabric, though and still have today to experiment. I've worked out that I can leave half the fabric as is--to use on the quilt if it turns out to be the best option--and overdye the other half with a slightly different green. To do that, though, I'll have to clear the sink again.

Wall of Colour

I dropped in to the local hardware shop a couple of days ago. I'm gradually collecting the makings of a Japanese braiding stool for Kumihimo. I managed to find a set of circular hole saws, which I'm hoping will work for the central hole in the stool. Before I can try them out I need to remember where I put the wooden plate, which I've allocated for the project--things are still somewhat disorganised around here.

While I was there I stopped to pick up some paint chips: I have a collection which I use to demonstrate and experiment with colour matching. Who could resist this array: Interestingly, despite the wide variety of colours avalable, I struggled to put together a simple colour wheel of primary and secondary colours. A lot of the shades are muted and there are lots and lots of neutrals. But I did head out with a handful of colour to add to my collection.

Options and Temptations

My brain is running on several tracks at the moment:

• I'm still completing my Spinning Certificate requirements;


• I'm dreaming of some weaving I'd like to do;


• I'm planning my next Patchwork by Machine class;


• I'm dyeing a batch of yarns for myself;


• . . . oh, and then there's the housework, but we won't talk about that!

I made a trip to Spotlight yesterday. I do normally try to support the independent local stores, but it was nearly 5 pm on a Saturday and I'd run out of bobbins for measuring and presenting my yarn samples. That's a major task for today, so off I went. The bobbins were only a few dollars for 100 and they had both cardboard and plastic--it's been a while since I've seen the cardboard ones, so I bought a pack of each. A few more dollars for a magnetic seam guide--we were talking about options for accurate stitching in class last week, so here's a chance to try it out. My spending was still under the $10 mark and I was heading for the checkouts when I saw the Quilting Cotton clearance rack . . . uh oh!

1 metre of the large floral fabric, 1 metre of the gold fabric (on the far left) and 30 cm of each of the others. Why? Because they caught my eye, were half price and are a great demonstration of a fabric range with built in colour choices to show my class. And I've decided I don't even need to wash and iron them before I teach on Wednesday night. They will tell their story beautifully just the way they are.

Post Script to Feathered Star

I think I got the photo's of V's quilt block up almost before she had a chance to get home. She sent me an email to tell me that the reason she went looking for the purple fabric to go in the feathered star design, was because she'd seen the colour in the dots in the selvedge of the fabric. And she kindly sent me a photo of the dots. So here they are:

Most quilting fabrics have these colour dots in the selvedge--one for each of the colours included in the print. That makes it nice and handy to match colours, especially as in this case, when it's quite a complex design. No. 5 and No. 10. are the relevant ones here. Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to the colours in the feature fabric, but it makes a handy reference.