Last Sunday my good friend Sharon and I got together for a Girl's Day IN! We shared a bottle of Bubbly, and well, I guess I've already told you most of what happened. But my point here is that for a day or two after drinking that heavily I don't quite function properly.
The next day I had a taught a class on Dimensional quilting. Two of my tried and true beginning students took the class. (I really need to start taking pictures at my classes.) Anyway, I showed up at my regular time for class, a little after Five pm. The time I usually get there. They were there and set up. I walked in and said, "Oh heck, this class was scheduled at five wasn't it?" I had totally forgotten that I had scheduled that class earlier than the others.
So the next day, Tuesday, was the guild meeting. I was determined to be organized for it. I had spent about four hours on Saturday on the phone confirming with people that Maria has signed up to teach classes and Saturday Sews. There were a couple of other leads too that I wanted to follow up and I managed to get a hold of a couple of them as well. So I thought I was prepared.
I spent most of the day Tuesday working on a project called Discharge Dying. This is an interesting technique of making images by removing dye from an already darkly dyed fabric. I used a solid black and also a dark red and a navy blue fabric and then I experimented with a bleach pen and also bleach straight from the bottle applied with either a Q-tip or a paint brush.
They both worked fairly well. The fabric with the curly-q's on it used a bleach pen and at the bottom you can see the bubbles where the pen was starting to run out.
The face was a picture I got off the Internet of an album cover of Paul Simon. And the words I used were song lyrics from his Graceland Album. I saved the picture to my hard drive and then brought it up on Paint Shop Pro. It was only about 2 inches square so I blew it up to 4 inches. The resulting picture was very pixelated so I put a piece of regular typing paper over my computer screen and traced the light parts of the image making sure to make complete shapes and not just lines, because I knew that I would have to fill in the shapes with the bleach. It was still too small for a t-shirt so I put the resulting drawing in my copier and blew it up another 200%. I then had the size I wanted. I got out my light board and traced the image onto the test fabrics and onto the front of my shirt.
I used a brown 100% cotton T shirt. There was no way I could test the t-shirt fabric ahead of time without ruining it. But as luck would have it the brown beached out to a wonderful peachy pink. If I had known that color was underneath that yucky brown I might have tried beaching it out sooner. I didn't really like that t-shirt as it was so I wasn't overly concerned about wrecking it. Now of course I think it's my favorite t-shirt.
You can see the results of the two test fabrics. The red one has a pretty nice image even though you can barely see it. The black one ran into the fabric and I ended up using a Sharpy pen to re-define the image. (I think that one ended up looking less like Paul and more like Barack! But oh well, thems the breaks!)
I then threw everything in the washer and washed it up. It was dried in time for me to wear my new t-shirt to the guild meeting.
I was very overwhelmed at the guild meeting and stuttering more than usual. During my program on discharge dying someone (Clover McKinley, I think) asked me if people should be concerned about the fumes? I said, "You mean I should have been in a more ventilated area? You mean the fact that I've been breathing in bleach fumes all day is probably why my brain isn't working properly tonight?" Everyone was laughing hysterically, point made, I went back to the questions!
The rest of the night went great. We now have yet another Applique project to do.
OK, since I have a little time, I want to talk about Applique this week.
I have made a solemn vow to work on Applique this fall until at least January. To that I have also added hand work of any sort. I have a list of applique and hand work projects to finish which is now up at the left hand side of this blog. I have also signed a contract to finish the Grandmother's Flower Garden (GFG) quilt before the January guild meeting as well. So I have my work cut out for me.
Because I have this promise in place, I am now looking at all kinds of new Applique projects as being possible. Yesterday, while working at the shop, I noticed a nice pretty little project with appliqued circles that looked somewhat oriental. I realized that we had the perfect fabric for that project there in the shop so I decided to make it for Tawni as a surprise. I got the fabrics all cut out while I was there (waiting for customers) and last night when I got home I managed to applique all twenty circles onto the blocks. Today I will put the top together by machine.
I also have to finish another fused applique wall hanging today. If I get it all done I'll report on it next week.
My work is cut out for me today so I had better get to it!
See ya next weekend. I'll be haunting up near Mackinaw tomorrow.
Cindy K-K
The Haunter!
