Yesterday, I had the most fun day ever! I got into my dye studio and played with some 3 month old dye concentrates.

I tried parfait dyeing with silk scarves and I’m very pleased with the results. The 4th layer had no dye or soda ash added with it, but I did flip it over to the bottom about half way through.

I made a purple dye bath mainly for a cotton FQ (which came out pretty good) and added these scarves to take advantage of the extra dye. The first 2 are overdyed from previous experiments and the 3rd was a clamp resist of a new white scarf.

I made a plum/eggplant dye bath with navy and 2 reds, mostly to overdye a Tshirt (which got way too dark), but I added a pole wrapped white silk scarf as an after thought 10 minutes after the soda ash. I think this is the best one!

The Rose of Sharon quilters used to meet every week to stitch and provide mutual support. In the past several years, 3 of us moved away and one went back to full time work. But when our friend Celina had emergency surgery, we all came together to make her a quilt.
I sent out pieces of a focus fabric

and a neutral and asked everyone to make blocks in multiples of 3″ plus seam allowance.
I was gratified to receive blocks ranging from 6″ to 15″.







When I’d received all the blocks, Laura and Nancy came to my studio and we played with the blocks on the design wall, made fill-in blocks and segments and had the top together in 3 hrs. Then I added borders. We hired Janice Macomber of Creative Threads to do the quilting for us. Patti Karp made and applied the binding and also sewed on the label that I’d printed onto fabric.

We enlisted the support of Celina’s husband Bob to get her to meet us at a restaurant and we totally surprised her!

She did not expect to see any of us and she certainly didn’t expect to get a quilt. It was great! We’re sorry that we couldn’t find a day that worked for everyone, but at least more than half of us were able to come today.

We met again on March 6, and this time Catherine was here to see what we did with her challenge. We were all eager to see what Catherine had done also.

Catherine is feeling a bit nervous about her upcoming move to India. She is gratful to have her goddess watching over her shoulder.

This first post is about my crit group, The Artful Fibers. We get together periodically and issue challenges for each other. The challenge we presented at yesterday’s meeting was issued by Catherine Maxey, who was unable to get to the meeting because of a household crisis. The challenge was to use a photo image of ourself to make an icon.

Mine started off in one direction but changed completely by the time it was done. I had originally planned to embellish it with beads, but didn’t really love the final piece enough to spend the time beading it.

Sue Bates sees herself as a hummingbird.

Carole Kenny used this glamour shot from her theater days and set it in a make-up mirror complete with make-up and brushes.

Both Jean Fugio and Dotty Blair felt fragmented. Dotty was also feeling unfinished and rough around the edges.

We’ll bring these pieces back to our February meeting so that Catherine can see them and we’ll look forward to seeing what see did with the challenge she gave us.