Pillow Pals

 The quilt guild I belong to, Lake Quilters Guild, does a lot of charity work.  Tuesday this week will be our meeting and we will be having our annual all charity sew-in.  We make stuffed bears, pillow pals, and lap quilts.  This year there is a challenge for us to make a pillow pal and glam it up.  Bring it to the meeting and the guild members will vote on their favorite.  Afterwards these beauties will be given to residents of nursing homes.  The main stay of our pillow pals go to kids.  So I've designed 4 of the challenge pillow pals and had sew much fun making them!


 

 Here is my Hippie.  He is my favorite.  That might partly be because his shirt is made from our grandson's old Tee shirt.  (Our grandson is going to be 7 in a couple of weeks)  Then again, I spent my college years during that time ... good memories.

 This is his back.

 This is my kid all dressed in PJ's and fuzzy slippers all ready for bed, including his blankie.

 This is the first of my glamor girls, cute as can be!

This is my second glamor girl... she even has boobs.  Both of my girls have black panties on with lace trim.  This gal has those expensive shoes with red soles! LOL!














Sew much fun at my place!

Bette

Microwave dying

I didn't take pictures of the process... sorry.  Next time I do this I will try to remember my camera.

These came out  much more how I needed them.  I made the dye stronger so the colors would be stronger.

The Reveal

 OK here are the results of the snow dying.

I picked up my piles and put them in buckets of water to soak before I remembered to take pictures.   The one at the right was the base fabric before I picked it up.

 Here are the colors soaking in cold water.  I do that to help remove some of the excess dye in the fabric.  It saves on water.  Also, our water in the garage has been turned off, so I'm getting the water from an outside faucet.

From here on the fabrics have been washed and washed again in the washing machine until the rinse water is clear.  Then I put all fabric in the dryer along with a large bath towel to dry on permanent press setting.

Here is the silk fabric.  This is the shiny side.  In the center some of the yellow migrated all the way down to the silk, as there is just a bit of green in there.

 This is the dull side of the silk, it shows the pattern better.

This is the bottom fabric, I love how it flows from one color to the next, and how the red makes it all the way to the bottom.

 Here is the blue.I LOVE LOVE LOVE how this came out. The migration of the colors is soooo neat!

However, it's not what I need for the alter.  I am keeping this as it will be great in quilts.

The 2 yards of red came out fabulous.  There are so many shades of red, pink, and orange.  Where did the orange come from?  Maybe some of the yellow migrated up, but I think the yellow came out of the red.  The red that I have is not a primary red.    But all in all I am in love with this fabric.

Here is my yellow.  It too is very interesting and came out quite pastel.  I find the shades of peach so beautiful and delicate.  Obviously the red and a bit of blue migrated to the yellow.

Not what I need for the alter.  But this is a keeper as well.

So you now get the idea that snow dying (or ice dying) is uncontrollable.  You NEVER know what you are going to get.  That is the main thing that makes it so much fun for me.

OK, so now it was back to the dyeing as the blue and yellow needed to be redone.  This time I decided to do it quickly using microwave dying.  Yes I have our old still usable microwave that is dedicated to just this purpose.  The fabrics are in the washing machine now going through their first wash after 2 separate soaks this afternoon. (between the rain storms).  Tomorrow I'll show you those results.

Sew see you later,
Bette

Snow Dying

Finally it snowed last night.  It was so pretty when I got up this morning.  the sun was shinning, there was snow on all the branches of the trees.

This was about 10 AM, the snow was already beginning to melt and was blown off all the trees. By 2 PM our driveway was totally melted.  I was walking around outside with a sweatshirt on.

I decided I better get going if I was going to snow dye.  This may be my only chance this winter.  Here is my fabric soaking in water and soda ash.

For more specific directions go to my Nov  15 2011 post on ice dying.  It's the same except with ice.

I am dying the fabric  for the alter at church for World Day of Prayer.  Since I don't have enough bins to set the fabric on, I'm hoping that putting it on the stone driveway will work just as well.  I'll let you know in a few days.  Here I laid out fabric on the stones.  This was so that if there is any red clay working it's way up to the surface the bottom cloth will be the one to get it.  It will also be the one to kind of soak up the extra dye...????  It worked in the tub anyway. The bundle of cloth furthest away is silk, that's for me.

 Here the piles of cloth are all covered up with packed snow.  Very wet and a little slushy by now.  Being outside it will probably refreeze tonight, then tomorrow thaw out again.

 I've sprinkled procion dye on top of the snow.  About 1 teaspoon of red, about 1/2 teaspoon of  yellow, about the same for the fist lump of blue.  The final one is the silk and I put blue and red over that.

Here it is all covered up with plastic and held down with rocks.  Now comes the HARD part.  WAITING  ... WAITING and WAITING some more.  I found when I did the ice dying, when I left it alone for 48 hours it dyed better than the 24 hours.


I'll see you the end of the week when I have the results!

Fun with Friends

On Friday February 3, several of us got together at my friend's (Nancy) house.  One of the ladies is quite good at needle felting. She showed us how to make needle felted balls.  We laughed a lot and had a wonderful time together.

Having fun with each other.  











Marcia, our teacher.

Happy Valentines Day!

Here is what I did with the Explorers Guild yesterday, and what I did today.

 Yesterday, one of our Explorer members spent years as a pastry chef.  She showed us how to make chocolate plastic (pronounced plas-teek).  Then we got to play with the chocolate.  A close up of the flowers I made are in the next photo.

Today for dessert I made chocolate covered strawberries.  Some of them I rolled in chopped nuts after dipping them.   With the strawberries being marginal in flavor, the chocolate covering REALLY helped.

A close-up of my best flowers.  I'm definitely NOT going to be a person that works with temperamental chocolate.


Hope you all enjoyed your day!

Catch up

Oh it's hard to believe that it is almost the middle of February.  It is way past time to catch you up on what has been happening.

I left my spare camera battery and charger at our daughters over the holidays, so I couldn't take many pictures of how I was doing things.  I tried to use my old camera which worked fine until I couldn't down load the pictures.  The drivers were not compatible with my current computer.  AGHHH!  OK, so in pictures that I have this is some of what I've been up to the last month and a half.

 I made some grocery bags that I can wash and won't fall apart.  I've used them for more than groceries though.  I used fabric that had been given to me last year.  The embroidery designs are from Embroidery Library.  click  here to go to their site.  Then be sure to come back and finish looking at the pictures.

 This one is really cute as it incorporates spools of thread, buttons and scissors in the crown.