A great day to dye.

I can't believe how lucky I was yesterday. I had planned it as a day to do a lot of dyeing, a couple of weeks ago, with the intention of moving it if the weather didn't play ball. I have to do all my dyeing outside, there isn't room in the kitchen. So we have had torrential rain for the last 4 days, it wasn't looking hopeful, but then yesterday was a lovely warm dry day. Who would have thought it? Even more bizarre, it has gone back to pouring with rain today and will continue to do so until at least the weekend. I am very grateful for that one dry day.

I've managed to get all the fabric pressed and folded and I am fairly happy with it. It has all come out more muted than I expected, and I am not quite sure why. I suspect that I made some silly error in the maths. I also managed to dye two of my longarm test pieces. The larger one looks really good now it is all black and I think I will just finish it and use it. The other piece is smaller and I will save it to make a rag quilt. My plan is to use any and all leftover dye on test pieces so ultimately I can turn them into brightly coloured rag quilts. It is amazing what dye can do for all the odd colours of thread I use up when practicing.

In the process I also got to see how the alpaca wadding stood up to washing. I always wash freshly dyed fabrics at 50 degrees minimum to try and get rid of as much excess dye as possible. The alpaca went through fine. It did shrink a little but not significantly more than the cotton waddings. Also the exposed areas didn't disintegrate. I should have tried running it through the tumble drier but I didn't think of it. Next time. At least I now know I can put it in bed quilts and still wash them.

The quilt is the one I was talking about from the show. I would love to find out more about the artist. She is Russian and her name is Marina Mamonova. If anyone does know her, or any information about her work I would love to know. This was the first quilt to make me get my camera out and having seen all the competition entries it is by far my favorite.