Blues for a Blue Moon

In honor of tonight's Blue Moon, I'm running some photos of blues. I'm starting and ending with dying fabric blue.

Full moon a few months ago.

Blue sky over the desert in Jerome, AZ, above, and over the water in Sequim, WA, below.

Pale blues behind our house one morning.

Another juxtaposition of the desert, above, and water, below. The desert is in Sedona, AZ, and the water and Mt. Rainier are viewed from a ferry in the Puget Sound.

Great Blue Heron fishing.

 

Have a colorful day

Color and sunshine

Sunshine makes everything brighter.

After a gloomy weekend,

today is brilliant with color and sun!

Thank you Kandi

for this gorgeous bouquet

from your garden.

Have a colorful day

Comfort quilts

I made this top from donated Hawaiian prints.

I forgot to post photos from May's comfort quilt day, so here are a few from the design wall. We meet once a month to make quilts through the Gig Harbor Comfort Quilt Project. The quilts are given to local breast cancer patients who are undergoing treatment.

We had a little help from a furry friend that meeting:

Have a colorful day

Dye and paint classes at Sisters

Dye powders used in class.

At the Sisters (OR) quilt festival last week, I took two classes: Dying with Lynn Koolish and ink painting with June Jaeger. Both were excellent. I'll start off with the dying, which was a one-day class that Lynn called an open lab, which meant we could do whatever we wanted.



Lynn in front of some of her shibori dyed pieces.

Below are some of my fabrics being dyed using the low-water immersion technique, which gives a textured outcome instead of a solid color.

 

After the fabric had been in the dye for two hours, we rinsed it in cold water and clipped it with clothespins to the grass outside the art room. In the high desert sun and heat, the fabric dried in about 10 minutes. I dyed silk organza and cotton, and the silk dried in a few minutes.

Photo above is some of my fabric, and below are some other students' colorful results.

After I got home four days later, I rinsed the fabric again in hot water and then washed it in Synthropol. Here are the results. I did a six-color double gradation from yellow to fuschia and a few other individual colors.



My hand-dyed cottons.



My hand-dyed silk organza.

Next, I had a two-day class with June Jaeger on painting on fabric with Tsukineko inks. On the way to class we saw this dramatic cloud-draped mountain. (Classes are in the Sisters High School.)

June with her village quilt, which took her three weeks to paint.

My photograph of a flower and partly-completed painting.

We brought photos from home, traced the basic shapes on a clear sheet and then projected the enlarged image onto white fabric taped to the wall. (The fabric was backed with freezer paper to stiffen it.) Then we lightly traced the design with a pencil and colored it with the inks using a dry-brush technique.

June's ink and brush sets. One brush is reserved for each ink.

Here is my painting so far, a little wrinkled from being rolled during travel. I still have to go over it with some more layers of ink to smooth it out. I don't envision painting any more large pictures, but I do want to use the inks to embellish and shade areas of my quilts. One more tool in the toolbox!

I'm linking up to Nina Marie's Off-the-Wall Fridays:  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/2015/07/bonnard-hopper-off-wall-friday.html

Have a colorful day

The BIG Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

My week in Sisters, in central Oregon, culminated Saturday with the 40th annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. More than 1,400 quilts were shown for that one day throughout the picturesque town.

The second Saturday of every July -- the dry season --  everyone gets into the act. An army of volunteers hangs quilts early in the morning and takes them down when the show ends at 4 p.m. Most of them appeared to be hung with clothespins clipped to rope or clothesline.

 
The show draws more than 12,500 visitors from throughout the United States and many foreign countries. It's the largest outdoor quilt show in the world.

The town is filled with flowers and ornamental grasses, which served as a nice setting for the quilts.

My parting shot is what greeted us outside our condo door. Shortly before we arrived, a thunderstorm split this tree and sent it toppling -- luckily -- away from the building.

Have a colorful day

On the road to Sisters quilt festival

My sewing friend Linda and I hit the road last Monday for the big quilt week at Sisters, OR, stopping at quilt shops along the way. We stopped at so many that a six-hour trip turned into a 12-hour one! Here are some photos from the road:

This last shot is near the condo where we stayed. More this week on Sisters, my classes and the outdoor quilt show.

Have a colorful day