new love

I have discovered a new love. Rather I have rediscovered an old one-hand dyed fabrics. I have always loved them, but they were too expensive for me to really indulge myself, that and they are kind of dangerous. They are the Russian roulette of the quilting world. I have played that game before and lost. Just ask my Mom. I made a beautiful appliqued and pieced quilt and backed it with some hand dyed fabric, that I myself had dyed with RIT dye. They don't tell you a lot about fugitive dye on the rit box, but I learned about it the hard way. My first encounter was with some some purchased fuchsia hand dyed fabric that bled onto the quilt block when I got it wet, but that was only the beginning. My quilt full of bright colors went into the machine for a final wash after I hand quilted the whole thing. Not only did I learn about fugitive dye that day, I learned another dye term "over Dye" when the hand dyed brown backing fabric bled brown dye into the wash water and turned my blanket into a sepia tinted quilt. Still a pretty blanket by any standard, but not the blanket I had grown to love while working on it all those many months. I offered it to my Mom. The colors actually worked in her decor and it was more of a happy accident than quilting tragedy. I am overcoming it too in my own way. I have smartened up on the methods of hand dying and know a little more about how dye works and what you can and can't get away with. I know never to trust a store bought hand dyed fabric, and now that I know how to dye my own I may never have to. My gradation dyeing was a huge success as you can see and I am also in the home stretch of a second quilt top like the one I inadvertently over dyed a few years ago, hope and quilting springs eternal.