"Evil will triumph if good men...and women do nothing."


my adaptation of a quote by Edmund Burke.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Busy with Ball!

Baseball/Softball season has begun...well practices, anyways. Tomorrow is the official opening day! 


I am coaching 2 teams and assisting with a third team. Gotta love the sport! 



Tuesday, April 12, 2011

New snow-dyed fabric...working on RRCB...and signs of Spring?

I snow dyed a rather large piece of fabric the other day when we got 10" of snow in a storm. wine, purple, green and brown. The wine and purple took over...so I put it back on the screen, piled it with more snow...and added green and teal dyes. 












The end result is much nicer I believe! 




Today I stitched together the center of my RRCB scrappy quilt. It measures 75" x 90"...without borders! I am still piecing the outer border together and will change it a bit from the original pattern. Hope to have this one completed by the end of the month as I need to quilt it and send it to a show in California. Nothing big...no judges, just a show! How exciting!











Is this a sign that spring is near? I hope so. It has been awful cold here at night. Although the snow is melting in the day due to the rain we have been getting. 
Isn't he precious? A little cottontail bunny...not very old if you ask me. There are lots of birds chirping too! It sounds so peaceful outside.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Seatbelts....what to do with them when they aren't in the vehicle??

We replaced our seats in our new van with 3 point individual seating. 


Now...I have over 20 yards of seatbelt webbing. I am not going to throw these away. I really want to make some tote bags or something out of them. I need to play with these for a while and see what I come up with. I have some hardware too so this could be a lot of fun!  



Sunday, April 3, 2011

First Attempt at Snow Dyeing!

What fun! 
I snow dyed this piece about 2 weeks ago. I have shown pictures of each step. 
I used Rit dye..as that is what I can get locally. 


Materials list:
- piece of white cotton, prewashed in warm water to remove the sizing so that the dye would 'take' to the fibers. I did NOT dry the fabric after washing. 
- Rit dyes in various colors, eiter liquid or powder, I used both
- old metal washtub
- metal screen to place over top of washtub
- snow
- salt (Rit dye works best with salt) 
- tongs
- Retaine for washing in hot to set the dye




fabric laying on wire screen











 covered with snow
 adding green Rit liquid dye
 adding turquoise Rit powder dye
look at the pretty mixture
the dyes starting to separate into color due to the cold snow
more pretty colors
adding salt to help the Rit dye work...also sped up the melting process as the temperature was just at freezing
snow melting..see the fabric underneath 
snow almost melted
 wet
after washing/drying...isn't it pretty!


I have more fabric ready to dye...just need for it to snow! No fear...where I live, we will certainly see snow before June gets here!