My name is Charlotte, sometimes known as Ms Lottie, occasionally as The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady. This is my blog, where you'll find me writing a lot about my quilting and textile arts and a little about my family's life in a small seaside town in New Zealand. Haere mai!

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Fabric dyeing a colour transition and big news


These are what I've been doing in my spare time recently - my play time!  I've been wanting to try this for a while and even just doing two has taught me lots.

These were all fat quarterish sized squares of plain white fabric.  I soaked them in a soda ash solution then wrung them out and crammed them into small plastic pottles and poured just enough dye over them to be able to squeeze it through.  It's called low-water immersion dyeing and gives quite a mottled effect.


I thought I'd show you a page from my dye workbook.  It's where I keep notes of all my techniques and recipes and samples so if I want to replicate something again, I have a record of how I went about it.  I think it's really pretty looking!  However the purple and green remind me a little of my eyes....


Oh yes, the bump got better but the eyes got worse.  Kinda scary looking!  (No laughing, Cat!)  I had to go to work today and lots of explaining had to be done!  I told one friend my botox went wrong ;)

Now, on to my impending changes that I hinted at.  Two major happenings - I am applying to study Art next year.  I'm comparing a couple of different courses that I'm interested in, but I'm definitely applying and I'm really excited!



The other thing is that we are trying to buy a new house.  Except that it doesn't really qualify as a house, I reckon it's a dump.  Hubby is desperately trying to make me see it's good points.  That's part of the driveway in the pic above.  There is no way you could get down it without a four-wheel drive and I wouldn't be brave enough to drive it even then.  The pic is of the good part, the other parts I was holding on too tight!  The couple of good things about it is that it's closer to town and it's water-front with a jetty.  Can you tell I'm not as enthused about it as Hubby?  I guess I can see the potential, it's not every day that waterfront property comes along in such bad nick that we could afford it.  But the amount of work to whip it into shape is daunting!  Wish me luck!

10 comments:

  1. Fabrics look great Charlotte. Can't say the same for the eyes!!! Can imagine the reaction at work!
    WOW change of direction-good luck with your applications. Will it be a fulltime course?
    I'm with you on the driveway but if it's meant to be it will happen, if not you can forget the driveway.

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  2. Good Luck! With both the ART and the house, if you really want it. :)

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  3. The fabric dying looks fun, the bruised eyes don't! Good luck with the art course application and the house buy ... a waterfront house sounds idyllic and if you are successful, the driveway can be improved in time :) Elizabeth

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  4. Ouch, your poor face! The fabric dying looks interesting. Good idea to keep notes, I should do that for my soap making attempts! How wonderful re. the art course. Guess you will come to a decision about the new house soon! Big changes afoot as you say.

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  5. Hehehe, you look fantastic! I did get the other picture,this one is much more dramatic. I was just telling my boys about the rake incident and they said "did that happen when she was a kid?", uh, no, grown ups do these sorts of things too!

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  6. Good luck with the art - the face is spectacular! Hopefully your slightly mad hubby will turn out to be right.....or not!

    I do like your dyeing work. I did something similar several years back but haven't got back to it yet. This might give the impetus to try something else - I'd like to try dyeing with ice.

    viv

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  7. That's such cool news, I can imagine you will really enjoy the study!!! Love your dyed fabrics, sorry, never ordered the stuff from Dharma (postage remains to expensive - where will I get my speedball screen cleaner now?). Good luck with making the decision about the house - waterfront sounds great though I am definitely with you on the driveway (at least we don't get frosts)!!

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  8. Lottie, all my good wishes to you - wonderful that you can study - such good news which you are writing about. And the "house* - DHs want to do some or much work - mine does and I know your feelings.

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  9. Exciting news about the study - I am sure you will enjoy it so much and it's neat that you have decided to go for it. It sounds like hubby has an itch too that wont be ignored. It seems like a neat opportunity...!

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