The Serendipity of the First Batch of Hand Dyed Fabrics

The Before

Finally, its turned warm enough here on the shores of Lake Erie to get some hand dyeing done.  Traditionally the last few years, I've spent the month of June dyeing fabric getting ready for Quilting by the Lake - not to mention replenishing my stash a bit.  But this year, with the late spring and the even later summer, I'm just getting out the dyes now. 

Now, I started this whole process off getting out the my dye books and notes - looking over past blog entries - looking for new info on the subject - and one thing hit me. . . . I've been way too anal about the whole process. 

Remembering  the results that I've achieved over the years, the ones I liked the best were the ones that were just sorta thrown together.  I mean lots of times, I've carefully followed a dye formula measuring this and stirring together that and the results were pretty predictable and boring.   

The After

The ones that held the most interest were the ones that I just sorta threw colors together - where I scrunched them into red solo cups and just prayed it all kinda work out.  Oh and don't underestimate the power or prayer.  Most of these didn't need to be redyed and they were the least amount of work.  So with that in mind, I got out my dyeing supplies (kept in a big plastic bin) - put out big vinyl table clothes in my studio and got after it. 

Boy was it easier working in my studio rather than my front porch sitting on a bucket.  Better for my allergies too!  The colors I chose to work was - The strongest orange, golden yellow, mixing blue, forest green, avocado green, grape, and red.  I folded a bunch of them and batched them in baggies and I scrunched a bunch and put them in cups.  All of them have multiple colors. 

I know that Elizabeth is going to have  us dye up 10 yds at Arrowmont so I'm not too worried that I won't have enough solids this year.  Hmmmm - I would like to try some pole dyeing though - also I need to get more torquoise and yellow because I want to dye up some colors for the next in my cross series.

Soooo - we'll see tomorrow where this Seredipity session has led me - hopefully - with prayer - it will be some really cool results!