Several months ago I saw a blog where a child blew colored bubbles on paper. It was a “what if” moment. What if I colored bubble stuff with dyes and blew different colored bubbles on fabric. I told a friend about my thought and she wanted to dye fabric with me.

Summer went by fast and fall is upon us. If we were to do it, we had to do it now. It was hard to choose a day that it wasn’t rainy or windy. Finally, the day arrived. The weather was perfect. Three of us met in my back yard. Brenda, Candy and I were going to have fun.

I had found a home made bubble stuff recipe. The fabric was prepared for dying. Brenda made wire wands. Then we started to blow bubbles. Nothing happened. Very few bubbles came from the wands. The ones that did either blew away or just left vague colors. We tried and tried, but the project seemed to be a failure.

It was just a bend in the road. We had a great time and turned the project into something else. I scrunched and folded fabric and did baggie dying. Brenda flipped dye from her fingers onto the fabric and made wonderful pieces. The fabric that we dyed was awesome.

One of the background fabrics. Made flipping dye with fingers and brush strokes.

The red was dye on leaves. The blue was from a small bottle. The purple was from dye placed on the bottom of a cover. The yellow was flicked from the fingers.

Made with a paint brush. The colors blended at the intersections and makes a very nice plaid.

This is a great one. The purple and yellow green are great together.

The purple spots have a blue aurora borealis effect’

The fabrics that were dyed to go with the larger background fabrics.

The next day, I wondered if I had used commercial bubble stuff and real wands, the procedure would have worked. The next day, Amazon delivered the products and I went out to try them. The end result was the same, The technique didn’t work but I still had great dyed fabric.

The background fabric. It was a lot of small splatters on a white background. I wondered what would happen if I sprayed it with water. The dyes, especially the yellow, spread and covered most of the white. I was disappointed at first, but now really like how it looks.

The fabric that was dyed to go with the background.

I have a lot of quilts to think about and great fabric to work with. I’m wondering if the procion dye was too heavy and rit or cool aid would be better. That’s for another day.

All’s well that ends well. We had fun and ended up with great fabric.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

It is a cool fall day. My outside work is all done except for a few finishing touches. I will keep my bistro set and lawn chairs out a little longer in case of a warm day. The shed has been cleaned in preparation for their arrival.

There are only a few more days left to do the dye project with one of my friends. We have to get together soon and have a fun day before the snow flies. The supplies are all gathered. The fabric has been washed and is ready for a nice day. Hopefully, the wind will stop so we can do our project in the back yard.

Four lap quilts have been finished and given to the Guild to give to someone who needs a quilt. They are not great beauties, but will be warm. They are just the tip of the iceberg of my unfinished quilt tops. There are several more to be finished and sent on their way.

Last week I wanted to use a built in embroidery on a project that I had started. I spent quite a while looking for the pattern on the machine. I had made a book of all the embroidery patterns that were built in on my other machines, but never did for this one. The striped fabric has been hanging on a hanger in the closet for a long time. Time to get it out and make a book. This has been fun. I didn’t realize that there were so many beautiful patterns. I’m sewing a row of all the patterns as they come up. After that is finished, I can add pages of patterns that I changed by making them wider, longer or combining patterns.

This has been a fun project.

The Shadow quilt has come back from the longarm quilter.

I made this quilt at a retreat before Covid hit. The quilting is beautiful.

Claire’s quilt is on the way to North Carolina. She is four months old now and a beautiful baby.

Inspiration for a new quilt seems to be hiding. In the meantime, I’ve decided to bring out the ugly quilt and work on it for a while. Maybe, I can finish it and move it on to a new home. It will be a great way to practice new free motion quilting patterns. The quilting should be better as I work my way out to the border. Miss Molly does need a new finished quilt to inspect.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

This has been a productive and also a non productive week. I bought a pattern for a cute little fabric pouch. The ad said that it could be made in 30 minutes. It would be instant gratification and I could make a few for the craft fair. The pattern was downloaded and read. Pictures were included with the instructions. I knew that the first one would take more than 30 minutes while learning the technique. Everything seemed to be straight forward. Then, when I did the final turn, it didn’t look anything like the pictures. It was awful. One whole day was spent trying to get it right. I finally put it aside and will deal with it later. I unsewed to a point where I could make a small zippered pouch. At least something is finished.

I needed two birthday presents. Nancy Zieman had a program on sewing bags from squares and rectangles. Nancy said that this bag was easy to make. She was right. I made two cosmetic bags out of double sided quilted fabric. It was so much easier to have instructions that worked. I might make a few bags from this pattern for the craft fair. The double sided fabric in my stash is gone so I might machine embroider some pieces for the bags. It’s a great way to use up scraps.

The bags will be smaller as I have a lot of 7″ zippers in the zipper stash. Instead of two pull tabs, I might make one tab and a strap. Each bag could be different. The original bag had an outside pocket. It might be omitted on a smaller bag. Lots to think about. More to come on this project.

I have received a quilt back from my wonderful long arm quilter. She makes the quilts come alive. This quilt was made from the 10″ block patterns in Kimberly Einmo’s book, Precut Bonanza. The fabric was from the Robert Kaufman Japanese fabric box.

I still have a lot of fabric in that box. I might use it in this year’s mystery quilt. The fourth clue for the mystery quilt comes out today and I haven’t even started. I’ll catch up when it snows.

My Maine guild is doing a rip and tear project, Everyone brings a yard of fabric. They stand in a circle and tear the fabric in half. Save one piece and pass one piece. Rip and tear the new piece that you receive. Keep one piece and pass the other one. Keep repeating until the piece is small. Then, the challenge is to make something out of your pieces. Everyone has the same fabrics but different amounts of each one.

My Concord mini guild did the rip and tear project yesterday. There were five people there. One member was missing, but we ripped and tore fabric for her. We have set the finished date for the project for February. This will be a fun project.

Most of the fabrics are dark. We decided that we could add one fabric for the background.

The weather should be good this week. Maybe I can finish the fall cleanup in the gardens. Some flowers are still there. I saw some morning glories along with the silver lace vine. I had planted some seeds in that spot, but didn’t think that they germinated. It was a nice surprise.

The geraniums are now in the house. Also, some cuttings which will hopefully root this fall and winter. I should also pot the rosemary and basil. They won’t survive outside. I bought a large plant stand that has 11 spots for plants. I need to fill it up.

Two of my Christmas cactus plants survived their vacation outside last summer. One is loaded with buds. The other has none. I’ve taken cuttings from the third one to keep it going. All three are different colors.

It’s a pleasure to work outside now that the weather is cooler. Planning for next year while cleaning up the gardens make the work go faster.

Have a great day and happy quilting.