Tea Dye Thursday

Teabags and Dye Day Thursday..

Other niggling issues have kept me away from quilting over the last few days. I had missed quilting dreadfully but there were other things in life that had to be done and dealt with, it made me a busy person.
Today I thought I really must work on JAKE. I love that name I always said if I ever had a little boy Id named him Jake.
I thought about a cot quilt for him, so amazingly I dyed some gorgeous Aqua blues in a huge cauldron on the cooker. I was delighted with this, they washed out in such cool colours after a wash in the washing machine and drying out on my balcony.
Next came the idea of what colours I'm I going to use next to the gorgeous turquoise? so out comes the cauldron again and this time I messed around with fabric paints, copper fabric paints some orange paint, tea bags. Now I cannot stand the smell of tea bags or coffee so I shouted at myself to stop yukking at the smell and just get on with it. I found an old container of spices and was too way out of date to use in curries so I put all of this in and about half a bottle of vinegar to fix everything. My dogs looked at me as if I had totally lost the plot, they knew their mummy hasn't been too well over the last few days but, teabags....? paint? spice? in one big pan?.
What was mummy thinking?
By the side I had a few fat quarters that I just did not like due to the colours being a bit too bright so I put these in the huge pot so see if the colours would dull down a bit. Some of the fat quarters were bright alarming bright pink, which came in a bundle. I ducked these in and oh what fun fun fun Nutbud is having with this huge cauldron.
When the whole odd looking content in the pan cooled down, I rinsed the whole lot in cold water in the sink then put the remaining fabric in a quick wash in the machine to make sure all things loose or could bleed out of it, didnt sort of come out any more. So I will have to wait and see how this all dries out. The awfully bright pink dulled down to a salmon looking colour so I was really pleased about that. All these colours which I had dyed today, all go well together and compliment each other. This feels more rewarding when you have dyed the fabric yourself and use it in some quilting project somewhere down the line.
The weather has turned really cold and the weather forecast mentions that we are going to get some snow over the weekend which has really surprised me, considering how mild it has been over the last few days. This time last year I was in London with my mum visiting the Tower Of London where my nephew worked. I remember at that time being freezing cold and having to wear a sheepskin body warmer in bed as it was so cold. The project at that time was a needlepoint bag which I was doing for myself. I will try and look out a picture on my file to see if I have it some where. Even on these wools I had to dye some to make it more like a New Age effect. The idea was inspired from one of my idols Kaffe Fassett, after reading his fabulous books.
Well I had better go now and see how my masterpiece is drying. Happy quilting to all . I could not find the needlepoint bag design instead i found a watercolour which I had done representing this march weather so far.
Nutbudxx