Mini art quilts

I would never have made a mini quilt if I didn't belong to an art quilt guild. We have worked our way through a couple of design books and in the process have made mini quilts to practice what the chapters were teaching. I moved from thinking that mini quilts were a waste of time as they had no purpose, to realizing that they are a great way to test out ideas ideas for a larger quilt, or to try new techniques.

This one began life as an exercise from Lyric Kinard. She suggested tracing around a pair of scissors and then playing with the tracing to make an abstract quilt. I liked the intersection of the handles, but when I repeated the design it insisted on becoming a flower shape. Some times you just have to give in... Next blog post I'll show you what happened when I explored that intersection further. Here it is the "flower" center.

Scissor "flower"

Something I find helpful when I am between ideas, or needing to do something mindless while ideas percolate, is to make strips. The strips here were fused from small leftover pieces. One day I fused long chains, just playing with colors and using up scraps. Lo and behold, I finally found a use for them.

Another reason to love hand-dyes: the ability to create graduated color. All of the outer sections came from one piece of fabric, which was dyed in a graduation from cerise through apricot. 

Of course a mini quilt is also a great excuse to play with some hand embroidery, and to couch some hand-dyed threads. Because it is so small it comes together quickly and is a breeze to sew. A mini quilt can be like a mini vacation after a big project!

Frustration-free yarn bundles for dyeing with Procion MX

Here's how to prepare a skein of yarn for dyeing so you avoid tangles and frustration.
Take 2 chairs and drape the skein of yarn over the backs of the chairs. Move the chairs far enough apart that the yarn will not be slack, but you don't want to stretch it. The demo yarn is Queen Anne's lace. It is a 100% cotton and dyes up beautifully with Procion MX dyes. I then use it for couching. 

Dye bundle tutorial 1

 Now you need a fiber that is not going to take the dye, so it is easy to see to remove when you are done. Acrylic yarn is perfect. I see you, Ms. Twitch, leave it alone!

Eyeball the yarn and tie a piece of acrylic yarn in two equidistant spots. Notice how the tied pieces are by the chair backs. I am going to be working in the open area between the two chairs.

Dye bundle tutorial 2

Take as many strands as you feel will be comfortable for dye batches. I find 10-15 strands is a good number to work with, as I can be sure the dye is squished into all the strands. Nothing worse than finding white patches when you are done. Tie a piece of acrylic yarn around the strands you have chosen. You can use a simple double knot. Separate another group of strands and tie them together. 

Dye bundle tutorial 3

Tie them loosely, so that you can insert the tip of your finger into the knot. If the knot is very tight, you risk the dye not being able to get to the fiber.

Dye bundle tutorial 4

Continue until all the fiber is tied off into batches. When you are done, move the yarn around a little, and you will see if there are strands you have missed.

Dye bundle tutorial 5

 Now do the same on the other side of the chair. You should now have the yarn tied in 4 places. If you think of the skein as a square, then 2 opposite corners should have a single tie, and the other opposite corners should have multiple ties. 

Dye bundle tutorial 6

Ms. Twitch is doing her best to undo them all, so we will have to move quickly! Now comes the scary bit!

Dye bundle tutorial 7

Cut the entire skein at one of the single ties.If you wanted longer pieces, you could only separate out the threads once, and only cut once. You would then have yarn the full length of the skein, but it would still be separated into bundles.

I prefer to hand couch, so I like lengths half the length of the skein. I am therefore going to cut again at the other single tie. I now have neatly bundled yarn, ready for a soda soak and dyeing. See this post. 

Having been scolded for being obnoxious, Ms. Twitch is now feigning indifference to the whole process. Do not be fooled...

The less untangling you have to do, the more time you can spend dyeing, and that's what we are really interested in..color, color and more color, and the ability to blend hand-dyed thread and hand-dyed fabric, and have fun! 

Shahrazade yarn, cotton and rayon blend

Project in process

No longer threadbare!

Procion MX continues to rock my world with color! I love to add hand embroidery to my fiber creations, so what could be better than dyeing my own thread? Quilting Arts Aug/Sept 2014 had an article by Melanie Testa and Carol Soderlund on dyeing your own thread. I bought the thread winders they recommended, but when I came to do the dyeing, I couldn't find them. You know how that goes...But it was all good, because I like my way better, although there is some winding and untangling at the end.

Once my dyes were mixed and my fibers were soda soaked, I took some trusty plastic shelf liner and added three generous dollops (very scientific term..) of analogous colors towards the back of the plastic. For more complex colors I added black or grey. Then I laid the skein of thread closest to me on the plastic. With gloved hands I then drew beads of the dye down to the fiber, mixing the colors in some parts, keeping them pure in others. It is so fascinating to see them blend and change, and this way I could get a lot of color variety because I could adjust the length of the fiber strands. I have several sets of lidded plasticware for batching, and I also used them for soaking each color set in water to get rid of the excess dye when the batching was complete. Three days of changing the soaking water and the dye was gone. The hardest part was getting them dry! They are more tangled than usual because I got impatient and threw them in the tumble drier in garment bags. Luckily my daughter is almost as obsessive as me, and will join me in a winding and untangling fest! Grown up daughters are the best! So companionable!

Once dyed, the threads can also be overdyed, providing you haven't saturated the color receptors the first time around. Great for couching, embroidery etc. Yarn is from Dharma Trading.

Procion MX dyed cotton yarn

The first time round I added a reasonable amount of soda solution, but didn't cover submerge the fiber, and when I came to add the dye, it didn't penetrate all the way in some places. The second time I completely covered the fiber in soda solution, expecting to be able to drain off the excess, but it drank it all in! Greedy stuff. You could probably soak it in water to get it saturated and then just add the soda ash you need for dyeing. Once wet, the dye seemed to travel fine. This yarn takes forever to dry too, but is very rewarding once it is done. The first yarn pack I bought, I cut it into lengths suitable for couching or embroidery and then dyed half in oranges/corals/pinks and the other half in greens. What was I thinking?? These are big packs. No one needs that much green! Luckily it overdyes beautifully. This was a desperately boring pale lilac, but not anymore! Some of the green is now teal and turquoise.



I had so much fun with the first yarn pack, I then tried the shahrazade. Clearly I should not enter spelling bees, that is a word with waaaay too many letters! This yarn has rayon slubs, which also dyed beautifully. The more prosaic thread is DMC 8.

Procion MX hand-dyed DMC and rayon/cotton blend

Lots of fun, and not difficult at all! Give it a shot! (If you haven't used Procion MX dyes before, do some research and make sure you use safe practices. Paula Burch's website is a fount of information )