A long-overdue update. July was about getting ready to go on vacation, then being on vacation. And I've been too busy sewing and otherwise being creative since I got home to take time to upload pictures. And while I was on vacation I discovered Facebook --- nothing more needs to be said about that.

A couple of finishes to show off. First is the little quilty wall hanging:

I didn't do anything fancy in the quilting, just an echo around the figure, and some random cross-hatching in the border. It now hangs what was the one last blank bit of wall in my studio, and stands guard over the baskets holding current works-in-progress. The kitty seems happy to be finally out of the drawer and doing what she loves best - snoopervising.

The second finish was the leaves quilt:

This one too had been languishing for far too long, and I'm happy to have it done and ready to hang when the season changes. And in the process I got back into the rhythm of hand-quilting, and figured out how to get enough light to see what I'm doing while sitting in my favorite chair, so I already have another hand-quilting project in the works.

The real news is that I'm taking a class in dyeing fabric from Quilt University, and these are the results of my first efforts:

The far left fabrics are the results of the first pass through the bucket of dye - bright, clear, primary colors. There is a little bit of mottling on the red and blue, but I would use these fabrics in a project, since I mostly think mottling adds character to the fabric. The middle column shows what I got from the second pass through the buckets; these fabrics are much paler and more mottled. And finally I did some color mixing with what was left over: blue-yellow, red-yellow, red-yellow-blue. Again, they are mostly quite usable colors, although the tan would not be my favorite.

I had great fun doing this. Old Chemistry Teacher Brain kicked in from time to time, and reminded me how to handle powders that I didn't want drifting around the room, and the importance of wearing my rubber gloves, no matter how much I hate them. I'm really looking forward to the next lesson, where we'll learn how to make secondary colors and how to get mottled fabric on purpose.

There are quite a few projects in progress at the moment. I dug out an old applique kitty project to take with me on vacation, so that's officially a WIP again. There's the hand-quilting project, which is a Christmas throw I put together a few years ago. I made a set of blocks from the Turning Twenty Again pattern, and have now turned them over to my friend Mary Jane to work out the layout. Today I finished sewing together the fans from the Stack-n-Whack fan project. And there is the Double Wedding Ring. There may be more, but these are the ones that are taking up space on my work surfaces.