Oxymoron?

I've been working through a list of requests for my ruffled wristies. I have to admit I've been putting off knitting the first on the list. The thought of a pair of pale grey ruffled wristies just didn't sit well in my mind. Well, I've made one of the pair. The second is on my needles.

What do you think?

I'm still not convinced. I'm going to try to dye a paler shade of grey. And the good news is that I can always overdye the finished pair in a completely different colour.

Colour Choices

I always look forward to that stage in a course when the teacher says, "now choose something you like"! It came on Friday afternoon in our Colour Theory class. The invitation to choose was even more welcome by the time I'd slogged through a couple of hours of homework yesterday. I've done a fair bit of colour theory and colour mixing in the past, so I decided to base several of the colour mixing exercises on a colour I don't like. I chose an orange as my key colour and developed complementary, split complementary and analagous colour schemes around it.

Then it was time for the Happy Homework: choose a photo you like because of it's colour combinations. I decided to sift through photos from a few years ago rather than choose something recent. I also decided to choose something I haven't already got on display in my home. I wanted to come to it fresh.

Of course I don't know what we're going to be asked to do with the picture we bring, but for now I'm satisfied with just enjoying the colours.

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.

Hey Presto, Not!

One of my tasks for yesterday morning was to choose the border for a quilt. I put most of the quilt together in a flurry of activity a couple of days ago. I wanted to get the blocks pieced and sashed to show my Patchwork by Machine class. Only I didn't start until after lunch on the day of the class--let's just say I had to stay focussed to get in done.

OK, I have the main part of a quilt top done--now to choose the border. The main fabric is a purple floral print with pretty little buds and leaves. I bought a selection of related fabrics in the one shopping trip. There are lots of obvious colour choices, but none of them looks right when I try it against what I've got. I spent some time going through my fabric collection and some time consulting. Then I went back to the store where I bought the original fabrics. There were several more fabrics in that range on special, they came home with me--oops. And I bought a plain bottle green homespun thinking it would do for the border. When I tried it again last night, I wasn't convinced. It was OK, but plain boring.

At this stage I think I know what colour I want, but none of the fabrics I have are quite it. And I'm reluctant to buy any more fabric just now. Plan B--or is it Plan C?--alter one of the fabrics I have already. I started by bleaching back the bottle green homespun. I wet it, scrunched it in a basin and sprayed it with bleach. Then I rinsed it thoroughly and hung it to dry. This is what I found this morning. It's certainly not boring any more, but it's not quite what I want. I'm going to try overdyeing it with a different green. The bleach has given me some room to move as there was no way any colour was going to make an impact on the original dark green. I've got another couple of fabrics that can go in the same batch. They're all different versions of greens, so they will all come out differently. Hopefully by Monday I'll be ready for another batch of border auditions.

Triangle Progress

Week 2 of the "Working with Triangles" Class last night. I wasn't feeling the brightest, and I needed to communicate a little bit of geometry without causing too much anxiety to the students. To my relief, they got it--some from my explanations and some when I had the sense to stop explaining and let them try it out for themselves.

Here's L's pinwheel star block ready for final assembly: I'm so pleased with how these blocks are turning out. It's one thing to design a project for myself, choose fabrics and see how it works. It's quite another thing to generalise from those choices so the students can choose their own colours and fabrics and still get the overall effect. This block depends on the play of light, medium and dark fabrics to form the double effect of the star superimposed on the pinwheel and I'm excited to see it so clearly in a different colourway. The final class is next week and several of the students can't be there, so I jumped ahead a little bit last night to explain the borders that go around this star.