Southern Highland Craft Guild Heritage Day

 The Southern Highland Craft Guild hosted the annual Heritage Day on Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. Events included singing, clogging, sheep shearing, sheep herding, wood crafts, weaving, quilting, soapmaking and many more. It's wonderful for children and adults. First stop was the woodcarver showing his beautiful work as well as demonstrating the craft.

My granddaughter Audrey was intrigued how he started with a block of wood and ended up with a beautiful hand carved and painted bird.

 The weaver was also fascinating to watch...

 Wow...so that's what a loom is......

  I think Audrey's favorite was the quilting or maybe just Connie....or probably both. Connie Brown had a quilt set up for everyone to try their hand at.....She also had a display of some of her own quilts and step by steps for piecing a quilt.

Audrey took some stitches and was then asked to sign her name and where she was from...

 She also has a thimble on her finger...never too young to learn to use one. I learned early on and can't sew without one now.  Below....Martha Owens was showing carding and preparing the rovings to be spun into yarn for weaving...each child was able to take some rovings to feel how soft they were.

A table full of different kinds of apples, many of which are not grown for public use anymore. I can't believe how many varieties there are.

 Audrey loved to pick them up and sniff each one...yum.

  One of the highlights was the herding of sheep...I thought I got a picture of the beautiful Border Collie but the light was too strong. He was amazing and so smart...he also herded some geese and got them to cross the bridge.

The woodcarver who made houses was amazing...so creative and fun to see.

 

Well, it was back to quilting with Connie where Connie suggested that Audrey asked me to teach her to sew?!

Are those the best words to say to a "quilting nana"...I should say so

 What a great, fun and educational day for people of all sizes and ages...

Ice Dyeing Retreat Pt. 2

Here are some of the results from my ice dyeing...It was nice to experiment with different fabrics.

The above is challis on left and a blend of silk and cotton on the right. The silk/cotton had a nice sheen to it and took the dye beautifully.

I also took advantage of the situation and made scarves which I have in 3 stores so always in need of extra inventory. Below, the one on the left is the mercerized, broadcloth cotton. The process of mercerization is the treatment of cotton with a caustic soda solution to give it strength, luster and more receptive to dyes. I've done experiments using different cottons in the same batch of ice dyeing and mercerized is always the brighter, more intense color. Maybe that's not for everyone but I love the look. On the right (below) is Hoffman batik for dyeing - very nice color.

This is another piece of mercerized cotton....

and more fabric - mixed...
I did label some of the fabrics with the dye combos I used; sometimes it's useful if you want to repeat. I usually like to have a more serendipitous approach to this technique. With scarves I do like to keep tract of color combos for the purpose of selling.

More samples on silk and cotton....

I was mostly happy with my scarves although some I can see scrunching up and putting in a stocking to overdye...like the beige on the left...not too pretty. The yellow is crazy bright and I might want to tone that down a bit.

This is such a fun technique with usually good results and if not...there's always the next time when you can overdye it.

Ice Dyeing Retreat Pt. 1

A small group of gals from the Mountain Art Quilters - a satelite group from the international group of SAQA got together for some ice dyeing. Everyone brought lots of supplies which included procion mx dyes, soda ash and fabric.

Oddly enough, we all brought different blues, greens etc so sharing provided so many choices. Tables were set up close by for easy access.

Risers were used to give us a more comfortable height to work with. Trays with screens on top were put in place, ready for the first step - white fabric and ice.

I can't help but laugh when I look at these tables, envisioning them to come alive and start walking...like something from an old time horror movie - "Revenge of the Tables".

Okay...back on track...first step is to place scrunched up fabric which has been soaked in a soda ash solution on top of the screen and then covered with a layer of ice. I forgot to take a picture of the white fabric but you can see a bit of it peeking out. Make sure all of the fabric is covered.

Next step is to sprinkle procion mx dye on top of the ice. I like to use around 3 colors. You can see the dye is distributed in a "polka dot" like fashion, allowing each dye its own place on the ice. Dyes should melt into each other by touching.

Here the ice is completely covered with dye. As the ice melts, the dye strikes the fabric. Since the ice melts at different rates, you get a crystal like effect on the fabric.

The ice and fabric are covered with black plastic and clipped all around. 

Sometimes I like to repeat a color combo especially when I make scarves so I thought to photograph the jars of dye with names on front for each batch....now to figure out which batch belongs to which dyes...harder than you would think.

Even in warm weather, which it was....very.....the ice can take hours and hours to melt and you want at least 4-5 hours for the dyes to batch...well, the big reveal is certainly the best part.

We all used different fabrics which can creat different looks. Procion mx dyes work on all natural fibers. I used mostly a mercerized broadcloth cotton which I like the best. I also found in my stash a cotton/silk blend (60/40) which was a nice surprise and it dyed well...We had some rayon challis, Hoffman batik for dyeing, gauze, silk scarves and felt. This is also a good method for overdyeing fabrics you don't like...even prints.

We did one tray of all blues...

and rusts and reds....

This was our black, gray and Havana brown tray...amazing the way some of the colors split.

The blues and yellows

very vibrant...

We had 3 different clotheslines going....and a breezy, sunny day so the weather was perfect.

We also did some acid dyeing which only works on animal fiber - silk and wool..

and the color is brilliant as you can see.

These particular pieces of felt were clamped and resisted with objects to give white areas.

Scarves for personal use and for my Woolworth booth....Pt.2 coming soon with my fabrics washed and ironed...We had a large variety....and such a fun day!