More Pink!

The first quilted finished for 14 in '14.

I made this small quilt using fabric that I had gradationally dyed and snow dyed. It is about 18"x22".

This project has many sources of inspiration, from different blogs for ideas on dyeing fabric, to Craftsy classes for the pieced block (Ann Petersen's Playing with Curves, this is the Twist Tie block), and for the "Cathedral Windows" in the background quilting (Cindy Needham's Design It, Quilt It).

I dyed the fabric almost a year ago, and was just waiting for the right inspiration. It was lots of fun to make, and I am really pleased with the results. 

Because I took the Process Pledge -

The Twist Tie block was made with fabric that was gradationally dyed. It is done by dipping pieces of fabric that have been soaked in a water, salt and soda ash solution into the dye bath. The first dip makes the darkest colour. As the water solution is squeezed out, the dye bath is diluted and each successive dip gets lighter. The pieces of fabric are placed into individual baggies and left to exhaust for 24 hours. 

I appliquéd the block to the background fabric using a small zig-zag, and 100Wt thread. I quilting around the block and the pieces, but left the block puffy to contrast with the background. The batting is one layer of cotton, with half a layer of wool batting on top. All the thread for the quilting is 100Wt Invisafil.

I quilted feathers as if they were coming from the block. I only marked the stems.

Once the feathers were quilted I divided the background into five different areas using a Hera marker tied to a piece of string, to get nice curves.

I used a ruler and the Hera marker to make a half inch grid in two of the sections and added a few straight lines as a guide in the other three section.
In the past I have let the hand dyed fabric dictate the quilting design, but this time I wanted to see what it would look like if I just thought of the fabric as plain cotton.

Yes, everything I dye is shades of pink! My son is so right!

This next picture is of a snow dump that I pass every day. It is hard to tell, but we have had so much snow this year and the hill is really quite big. For those who don't know, they truck the snow from the city out to the dump (I recently saw that on Pinterest as a funny - "Meanwhile in Canada" thing!)

Those little dots are large bulldozers working.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥