Celebrating National Quilt Day

Last Saturday, Bev, Lisa and I went out for the day fabric buying to the sari store in NE Calgary, or at least one of them.  We met in the morning at Bev’s, and spent some time downstairs in her studio looking at some of ther “in progress”, “about to be finished” and “on hold” projects!

We Then went to Bhatia to buy silk, and although they didn’t have exactly what we wanted because they had a very low supply of Dupioni silk, we managed to spend a chunk of money in the store.  We purchased a lovely very fine open weave cotton, silks, some trim, etc.

After the purchasing trip, we were hungry so we went to Notable for lunch.  While we were sitting at the restaurant, Lisa noticed the front of the desk, and mentioned what a lovely quilting motif it would make, so we took photos.  The manager was very nice and even gave me some free lessons on taking photos on my new iPhone.  Here’s a photo of the front of the desk.  What do you think?  I believe I will play with this for a while, see what I can come up with.

And then we came back home and got ready to do some fabric dyeing.  First we cut the fabric off the roll:

then we divided some of it into fat quarters, and threw it into the wash to scour the fabric.  While that was going on upstairs, we chose the dyes,

mixed them, always keeping safety in mind first, as the dye particles are dangerous if inhaled, so we used dust masks.  Don’t we look great?  :)

Then, we separated the fabric, folded fat quarters,

and then we dyed.  Lots of fabric, lots of colors:

The sequins that you see in Bev’s pail are from a pillow cover we purchased that was white, and we thought it would be fun to see what happened if we dyed it.  I’ll post a photo of mine later on.

And here are some of Lisa’s fabrics.  Don’t they look great?

 And now, I’m off to play some and maybe do some shopping.  I need chocolate!

Keep quilting.  And remember … practice does make perfect!

Ana