A Dyeing Day

I worked a twelve hour night shift last night, and no matter my good intentions, it’s hard work getting motivated the day after an all-nighter.

I sleep till past lunch, but then I rub my eyes and yawn through the rest of the day.

So one of my strategies to still get stuff done is to pick something immersive but that doesn’t demand a whole lot of concentration. Something I can do while listening to 70’s music!

Today the dye studio won the lottery.

It was beautiful down there (my studio is a platform built under our house) with the sun shining through the ti kouka tree, and I got stuck in and dyed a whole stack of my variegated fat quarters. These will be for sale when I talk at Whangarei Quilters next Saturday.

I also tried a slightly different way of dyeing my embroidery threads. Usually I dye these in lots of two or three and carefully control the colour variegations. But today I put them on top of a white fat quarter to soak up excess and then just kinda went for it.

I’m looking forward to washing these out. They could be stunning...or they could be mud...

I’ll keep you posted!

100 followers must mean a giveaway!

So when I logged in today, Blogger told me I had 100 followers.  Wow.  It still blows me away that there are people out there interested in my quilts and what I get up to from day to day (I mean apart from my family who are kinda obligated to be interested!)

Just to celebrate the New Year and life and the fact that I'm apparently interesting, I thought I'd have a little giveaway.

I've become a little addicted to dyeing thread and I thought some of you out there might like some of my hand dyed, silk/cotton embroidery thread.  It's not quite the weight of perle cotton but makes a lovely embroidery stitch.  You could also use it for big stitch decorative quilting.  I've tried separated it into two strands for a finer stitch, it doesn't separate as easily as stranded embroidery thread, but it will.

And it's luscious!!  It's soft and strong and sews beautifully and, being silk, has a wonderful lustre to it.

Each bundle has 10 strands of thread in it.  Each thread is 1.3 metres long, so you get 13 metres in each bundle (I can't call it a skein because it's not continuous, but I'm not sure if there is a correct term. Anyone know?)

If you'd like some of these threads, here's what to do:  write me a comment telling me what you hope 2014 will bring for you, and what kind of colour bundles you'd like if you won.  You must be able to be contacted by email so make sure you add your email address into your comment or be a reply-enabled commenter.  I'm happy to post overseas.

On Saturday 25th January 12pm New Zealand time, I'll pick a random number for a winner.  Then I'll contact the winner by email and send that lucky person a parcel with five different bundles of thread in it, inside one of my hand printed zip pouches (I'll try and match the pouch to the thread colours).

And if you don't win but would like some of this unique thread, I'm going to be adding some bundles to my Etsy shop very soon.

Good luck!

Stressfully squeezing in some fabric dyeing

Hand dyed fabrics, silk habotai on the top and cotton sheeting from the pink down.  And my cute little storage bucket.  I feel a few more of these might just have to be made...perhaps in graduating sizes?

So I managed to get the little fabric buckets (because that's what they were if you were trying to guess) finished in the nick of time for the kids to take off to school in the morning.  

I had chosen the highly patterned fabric for mine, but of course that's the the one BOTH children wanted.  I got the orange hatch mark fabric in the end.  

The outside is made of a heavy linen and the contrast fabric is on the bottom of the bucket as well.

  Suz asked why there were three?  Because my daughter had a new graduate teacher this year and so had an older teacher helping out every week = two presents to stress me out!

Holiday prep is kicking my butt.  That's why you got the terrible iPad photo and post the other day.  I feel like I'm a wee bit stretched.  But it's really my own making.  Why on earth I would try and fit a little bit of fabric and thread dyeing in when I have a to-do list that just squeezes onto an A4 sheet of paper, I just don't know.  

But today was the first day of school holidays for the kids and I'm on annual leave for the next couple of weeks so that's making it easier.  

All the presents that had overseas destinations have been organised and I'm well started on packing for our annual camping trip.  

I've been a bit of a grinch and said no to a lot of Christmas functions and that's helped ease the load too.  Why do we feel the need to go to party after party after party?  I could go to at least three work related do's if I so felt the need!  But being the bosses wife, I do have to make an appearance at Hubby's work BBQ tomorrow - I'll put my non-grinch face on and fake it!

I hope to be back with a few more posts, but if I'm not Merry Christmas or happy whatever-you-happen-to-celebrate and keep it safe, people.  I want to see you all back in 2014!