Production day

Yesterday was my day off and I worked in my playground. I carded and added anglina fiber to 100 grams of Alpaca and blended 100 grams of merrino /cashmere  and anglina fiber. 

Here is my carding set up.

I wanted to setup on my little table so I can leave it up and not block my cutting table. I need to made a loading tray but in the mean time a Canadian Tire chocolate box works for now.

I also got this skein winder from my friend France and it works very well.

Here is my first ball of Merrino /cashmere wound off this winder. Beautiful to work with this fiber.

 

Project 2017!

Almost every year Peg and I start a new project. Today she gave me this. A box full of surprises. A beautiful pattern that she made up and we are to stitch each and every day! I will be learning so mucheck.  I always wanted to do more stitching and just love “portable projects”. I an going to love doing this.

Thanks Peg for encouraging me to learn in such a fun way.

Fun with the Whiskey girl’s club!

We had a great time together, thank you Sandra, Maria Cristina and Peggy I really had a great time. AND we actually got something done besides eating and yakking  and laughing. Look at our beautiful blocks! pretty pretty ! 

I had so much fun that I just had to so my next block (yes Peg Dany did help me ;))

Maple Ridge

I am in Maple Ridge BC for the week for work at Demo International.  Look at the beautiful view we had driving up to our site.

I will take more photos tomorrow after final installation.  Hard to take pics when driving. 😉

This is my view at the moment. …

Spindling cotton with my feet up….Ahhhh very relaxing. Tomorrow will be a long day so might as well relax while I can. Life is good.

Creative Monday

Well this is my last Monday off for the next couple of weeks then I will be on holidays! Youpie! So I desided that I had to get some name tag bags done that I promised to do for our Guild retreat in September. 

All there is left to do is stitch down the binding on to the bag. My machine doesn’t like going through all the layers without making pleats so I will finish them by hand.

Then I desided to see what my dyed wool from last weekend would look like. 

These rovings looked nice the way they turned out so I spit them into finger roving so i would be able to hopefully keep that graded look. I think it is going to look really nice.

Just having a relaxing creative day. Have a good week everyone.  🙂

More playing with dyeing fabric and fibre plus a little Alpaca fibre washing…

WARING EYE CANDY TO FOLLOW! LOTS OF EYE CANDY! Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 😉

 

Just before I start showing all the eye candy I want to thank 2 people, Maggie Vanderweit at Stone Threads http://www.stonethreads.ca/, and Ana Buzzalino http://anabuzzalino.com/, both wonderful ladies who Peg and I met at Quilt Canada. We took 2 courses with Ana, which were very inspiring and Maggie was so incouraging and sharing with advise and ideas. Maggie gave us that little push that was needed to get us to stop wishing and to go ahead and try dyeing. Thank you both for the beauty you add to the quilting world.

This is my new set up in my backyard and yes I have both hot and cold water! I am so spoiled. Told you I was hooked on ice dyeing.

I used to wash my sheep fibre in our old bathtub but this is much better.

4 different batches melting…

Here they are again mostly meled but the top one is having trouble melting because the bin is deep so the ice is slower to melt. Looking very interesting..

I waited until the next day to wash them out and dry them. I learned a lot, I will now always wait a whole day because the dye was set more and a lot less bleeding. So I must remember this Peg https://pegsplace.wordpress.com/  so remind me ok?

Here are closer shots of the results.

I love this one below, I think I will hide it and when I am more praticed on my new Sweet Sixteen Machine I will quilt it as a whole cloth wall hanging. I see peonies here,,,,it is so much fun to look and find all sorts of images in the fabric. I like it when everyone who looks at it tells you the different things they see in the material. Fun.

I didn’t just ice dye I also washed something …can you guess what is in the sink? No peeking at the next picture!

Did you guess?

FIBRE! And not any ordinary fibre but some wonderful Alpaca fibre from Johanne’s alpacas. She is my besties next door neighbor and so very nice.

Two little batches washed gave me all this…Lovely yummy soft cloud..

Awhile dyeing I figured why not play with fibre too. I had left over mixed dye from last fall when I dyed some fibre. This dye is not supposed to be good any more but I figured I would give it a go and if it didn’t work out I could always over dye. Live and learn right. I want some fibre in stock that is dyed just some basic colours so I can mix and blend and just play around with and this is what I got…

I love the mottled look so much that I think I will split it into finger rovings and spin it as is. It is too pretty to blend them together. I am courious to see what they will look like once they are spun and plyed.

Well all in all a wonderful 2 weekends of learning and playing now all I have to do is find a ”Time Tree” so I have more time to try more and more and more….. 😉

 

 

 

PJ’s dyeing day and more!

2 weeks ago Peg and I finally got together to try to learn how to dye fabric. I can’t believe how much fun I had. 🙂

Here is Peg in my messy basement, but we did have a great set up. It was good to be near a water source and I put a shower curtain on the floor for spills.

We each tried ice cube dyeing and I admit I am hooked!

We wanted “mottled” fabric and were tring for an uneven dye job, we did pretty good.

Loved this technique, folded and rolled up then dyed in bright red then in purple (which we mixed). pretty nice effect for our first time.

This above is Peg’s ice dye, wow is it ever beautiful in real life the photo doesn’t do it justice.

And this one is my ice dyed fabric. They are so different but both beautiful. For sure we will be doing this again and again and again. Fun! Thanks Peg for being so willing to get involved in such craziness!

Quilt Canada June 2016

A littke late in posting this but….What a great 4 days! 6 of us took a road trip to Mississauga Ontario to see Quilt Canada 2016. It was great. Wonderful quilts, great teachers and of course wonderful shopping.

Here is the gang, what a great bunch of women.

Peg and I took 2 courses with Ana Buzzalino http://anabuzzalino.com here are some of her samples.

Here’s Peg stitching up a storm (or I should say Apple)

Here is one is Ana’s quilts in the show.

And I did buy a new machine. I was looking at the Husqvarna Platinum 16 but after going back and forth I chose  a Handi-quilter Sweet Sixteen. I am very happy with this buy. 🙂
We got to meet some very talented and friendly quilters. It was so nice to meet people with the same passion.

We also met Maggie Vanderweit http://www.stonethreads.ca/mobile/index.asp. who is amazingly talented and so down to earth. A real good person. We won her draw of this lovely PFD mixed fabric kit and look at her lovely dyed fabric! I so want to do more dyeing and I hope to get some pratice done very some. Thanks to Maggie for more inspirating. 

And check out her book…just beautiful. 

Have a wonderful day everyone. 

Fun with family on the long weekend

We went to visit my sister in law and her family on their sheep farm and had a great time. Swinging in the sun and visiting. I took out my 2/8 cotton I bought to try out my knitting mill and my mom in law had a blast with it. She wants me to get her one.

Here she is not wanting to stop cranking until the tube hit the veranda.

She didn’t want to put it away and go in to supper. Fun!

I want to make a lot of the tubes then dye them. I want to weave it on the rigid heddle loom to make a bathroom mat. 100% cotton so very washable.

Learning to set up a Ridge heddle loom and having fun!

What a nice day! I learned tons about what not to do when setting up this loom. I spent the whole day with my Bestie Peg and we finally set up my Erica Ridge heddle loom. I think we did a pretty good job for 2 people who had no idea of what we were doing. ; )

First third threaded.

Peg getting her exercise walking to one of her house and back.

23″ threaded now to figure out how to roll it up.

Dany made us a pole that fit into my Grandmother’s quilt clamps so we could wind the cotton.

After a false start here is the loom all wound on.

The future weaver at her post.

The loom was my dad’s, I think he would have loved to help us set this up. I had a wonderful day full of smiles, wonderful company, nice quiet moments and filled with friendship. ☺ thanks Peg.