I dyed today

I haven't had this much fun in a long time.  I dyed today.  Fabric that is.  It is something that I've always thought about doing but, just didn't want to open another can of worms, so to speak. Having finally cleaned up my house, and my studio, gotten everything organized so I could bear to enter the room, I thought why not.  Things have been rather hectic once again on the home front, I haven't expressed my angst through my blog, and what better way to add a bit of cheer?  My friend, Laura, has long been expressing a desire to dye as well, so she brought all her supplies to my garage and we went at it, full  throttle.  As we began to mix the colors, we were also challenged to find new adjectives to describe each variation and shade.  "Oh, how pretty", just was not adequate.  And as we mixed and stirred, mushed and dabbed, spritzed and dribbled, we became more and more excited.  Although we did want to experiment, one of my goals was to have 12 basic solid colors.  Thank goodness Laura was here to remind me to wash my rubber gloves as we changed from color to color, or there would be no solids. 

Having a touch of OCD, to say that I was anxious about jumping into this new endeavor, would be an understatement.  A horrible nightmare woke me at 5AM, the whole dyeing experience was a complete disaster, there were ghostly, skeletal people constantly cropping up to ruin the results, I had dye all over the garage, and my hair was a unflattering shade of orange.  Maybe it's the word dye that had my subconscious in such a turmoil.   But now that we've gotten yards of fabric gloriously colored, I think that I will sleep very soundly tonight.  Dreaming of all the tints and shades and brilliantly colored fabric. And thanks to some wonderful books and blogs for reference, I think this might become another obsession, as I'm already itchin' to do some batiking a la'  rOssie and Malka.

Oh, and speaking of dyeing/dying, I will be checking off another item on my bucket list in a couple of weeks.  On my list of favorite quilt artists is Carol Taylor and I'll be taking three workshops with her very shortly at the National Quilt Show in Columbus, OH.  Carol's hand dyed fabrics and award winning quilts have long been inspirational to me.  So now I will have my own pretties to use in her class.  Dyeing has never been so much fun. So much so that I'm already mixing more batches.  Yup - it is, indeed, obsessive.

  Wish you could see the real thing as my pictures are a bit over-exposed, but you get the idea.  Can't wait till the next batch is ready to dry in the sun.