Indigo Dyeing With Quilty Friends

My guild did it's in person meeting in August at a member's home and we did indigo dying. Indigo can dye all natural fibres. It gives beautiful shades of blue — from the palest summer sky to an almost purple black. The colour achieved depends on the type of vat, the concentration of indigo, and the number of dips. Indigotin (the dye component of indigo powder) is insoluble in water. To use it for dyeing it must be reduced to a water-soluble form. All indigo vats need three things: 1) Indigo 2) A reducing agent 3) A Base. Chemically, we need to reduce the indigo to make it soluble — we do this with a reducing agent. Reducing agents can be sugars, some natural dyes or other plants, or chemicals. A reducing agent lowers the oxidation state of the indigo molecule, transforming indigotin into leuco-indigo — which is soluble in water at room temperature. If we just add powdered indigo to water it will remain in pigment form, suspended but not dissolved. What is the difference between a suspension and a solution? A fish is suspended in the ocean. But salt is dissolved in the ocean. You can see the fish (which remains distinct) you cannot see the salt (which has dissolved). If we can see the indigo (the dye bath is blue inside) then the indigo is not dissolved and the dye bath cannot be used to for dyeing. When the indigo is reduced it dissolves and the dye bath is a greeny-yellow colour. We had so much fun with all the various iterations that we produced that we are eager to do it again next year.

Phone A Quilty Friend

I oversubscribed to Block Of The Months in 2026--which will make 2027 the year that I finish the 2026 BOM's, but in the meantime I am pretending to try to keep up, and the single best thing for my quilting productivity is a group sew in on Zoom. I was saying at the last one I attended that this alone is worth the price of admission for me in my Modern Quilt guild. Do not get me wrong, I love the monthly speakers, especially the ones that we can record and watch within the next week if for whatever reason we cannot make the meeting. I am often so inspired by them, and occasionally go on to take a class or buy a pattern. I also love the access the the national Modern Quilt Guild's website--there is so much education and inspiration there I have yet to scratch the surface on what is available. And the list goes on. All told, though, the ability to sit in my sewing room--which I had to move to the dining room because my ability to sew in a small space expired sometime in the last decade. I seriously made my whole family eat outside on a muggy, cicada deafening night recently rather that clear off the table!--and sew with guildmates over ZOom is priceless to me. I have spent hours doing tasks that are hard to accomplish alone. The Pink Door Amish With A Twist quilt has squares that require a dozen or more different fabrics be cut out, who can face that solo, I ask you. And yet here I am, having cut out all the blocks for the current month while catching up with a friend wrangling her pink scraps--neither of us is done, but we both made progress and we caught up with each other as well. It is possible that I like it as much as in person sewing--the upside is that I do not have to move my stuff--I did get a cart a year ago to make the transport easier, and I do go to in person workshops and love them too, but at the end of the day, Zoom actually works better for me. I not only love it, I am inspired by it as well. Try it and see--especially if you are struggling to find your sewjo.

Improvisation In Modern Quilts--Shashari Kiburi

There is a short video on this subject on the Modern Quilt Guild's website that is well worth watching. It is almost a tangent but the artist dyes some of her fabric, and just looking through her website and listening to the talk made me want to get back into dying a bit. This is both educational on the subject of improv quilting as well as a demonstration of her process, so if you are someone who learns by watching and doing rather than by reading, yet another reason to check this out. The characteristics that are important to her in her own work are: * Wonky * Bold Colors * Use of Negative Space * Change in Scale * Use What You Have And a corallary is to Do What You Know. She favors half square triangles and Drunkard's Path, which are two things that I favor as well. She lays things out, then decides to slash a block and insert something into it, which is both bold and less initimidating, because you start with something traditional and then you literally cut it up to make something else.

Quilt As Art: Valuing Our Work, Tara Faughnan

I had an inspiring time at QuiltCan in Phoenix last month, but I purposely did not attend any of the lectures. I find the whole experience to be overwhelming, for one thing. Another is that while on site, I want to spend as much time with the quilts as I can, and finally, I find the leture hall to be too big. I am naturally antsy and to be in an auditorium with row after row of people is just not my idea of fun. So streaming the lectures at home hits all the right notes for me. I took an all day class with Tara Faughnan and it was amazing to be in the room with her for a day and to see her numerous featured quilts in the exhibit hall was an added bonus. Her keynote talk walked us all through her career as a modern quilter, her lack of success in the more traditional quilt world, and how her work fit so perfectly with the modern quilting sensibility, and how nourishing that was for her as an artist. That was all great to hear, but when she talked about quilting as art, how to value what we produce, and how it connects us to generations of quilters who came before us, that really resonated with me. I love those connections, feeling like I am walking in the footsteps of earlier family members--my great grandmother quilted--and to treasure and value my deep seeded love of fabric. She talked about her own drive, which is greater and more talented than my own, but coming from the same place when all is said and done.

The Burrito Pillow Case

There is a very long story involved in how I came to return to the Old Capital Quilt Guild 30 years after I left it, but let me try for the shortened version. I was an avid quilter before I had children, and I was in a fantastic Fiber Guild in Fresno prior to moving to Iowa. The classes that I took there launched me into a lifetime of seeing, doing, and appreciating artwork using fibers. So upon my arrival in Iowa, I joined to local guild. It wasn't quite what I had had but it was good and I was active up until the birth of my fourth child. After that the work-life balance was thrown off it's axis and my creative life came to a grinding halt. I did some quilting but I no longer had a group that I did it with. Fast forward to my mid-50's when I had and then survived an advanced cancer diagnosis and I was reminded in a very stark way that life can be short, and that it was time to make a few things before it was over, and through a series of wonderful inspirations from a co-worker, I was back to being in a guild again, this time a Modern Quilt Guild, but a year on from that, I rejoined my local guild as well. The very first thing I did was completely outside my comfort zone--agreeing to help teach a class in pillow case making to a group of kids who had never sewed. I have never taught sewing and never made a pillow case, but it all worked out, and I would do it again, and sometime before I retire I hope to have a lot more of these experiences. Here is a tutorial to make this fun pillowcase--which you can make in an hour, even if you have no experience at all: https://smashedpeasandcarrots.com/french-seam-pillowcase-set-in-under-30-minutes-tutorial/