Sunrise Quilt Studio

Our master bedroom is ready for a make-over. We've been in this house 3 years and I haven't done much in the way of decorating or painting to make the house our own style. So after purchasing the wingback chair at an antique shop a few weeks ago, I found my color palate and started collecting paint chips. This is one of the walls after painting. The true color is a bit darker than it's showing up here. It's dark enough that I'm looking for a lighter shade of blue-green. This is the same wall before I painted. It took several hours to get that wallpaper border off. This is the chair that gave me the color inspiration. I found 3 fabrics that coordinate to make toss pillows. I'll have to make a quilt to go with this new color palate. The chair will get a new slip cover. I also have an antique wood armchair that will get reupholstered in a golden tan damask fabric. The "throw" on the back of the chair is one of the tablecloths I bought at an antique s...

More surprises are found in hand-dyed fabric. This piece was fan-folded and dyed with dark green, fuchsia, and deep purple. Can you see the owl? Here he is! I have another 8 yards of fabric to prepare for dyeing. This is pfd fabric from Marshall Drygoods . I'll cut it into fat quarter sizes again. I seem to get the best results when using this size. I won't get around to applying the dyes until tomorrow due to some other obligations today, but I'll be all set and ready to play first thing in the morning.

Here are a few of the less dramatic dyed fabrics from my last batch. This was dyed with dark purple and Forest Green I used Fire Red, Turquoise and Fuschia on this one. Deep orange, and dark purple.

These new fabrics were left-over pieces of PFD fabric I had from cutting fat quarters from yardage. For this piece, I fan folded it on the bias then applied the dyes. I think this piece needs to be a wholecloth. To me it looks like a coral reef with images of small sea creatures floating around in the water. A dragonfly?

I've been working on our master bedroom with a budget makeover. DH and I really like to browse through antique shops, flea markets, and thrift shops. A few weeks ago, we found this wingback chair at an antique mall for $35. It was comfortable, clean, and small enough to fit through our bedroom door. Our master bedroom is large and is just begging for a sitting area. The original plan was to slipcover this chair in an neutral color, but the longer it sat in the room, the more the colors in the chair grew on me. So I have held off on the slipcover for now, and the next antiquing trip I started looking at things with the same colors. This is a tablecloth about 52" square and was $11. It's a bit brighter than the chair, but I love it. This is another tablecloth I found for $12. The aqua colors match the ligher colors in the chair. I haven't decided what I'll do with either tablecloth yet. Then, I started looking for fabrics in the shops to make toss pillows. I...

I really need to get motivated to start a new quilt. It doesn't need to be a show quilt, but just something fun. Right now life has been busy with other priorities and nothing has grabbed my attention as a subject for a new art quilt. I'd like to use some of my new hand-dyed fabric, but haven't a clue as to what to do. So, I'll keep busy with customer quilts to quilt and fabric to dye. All fun stuff, too. The above photo shows some of my fabrics stuffed in canning jars. I don't know the technical term for this method - "canned fabrics"? This is the result of this method of dyeing fabric. If you've ever wondered what the difference is between dyeing PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric and non-PFD fabric, here is the comparison The fabric above is using PFD fabric. This one is using non-PFD fabric. Most of the dye washed out even after 72 hours of curing time. :( It's good if you want a pastel fabric though.

One of the things that I love about dyeing fabric is that you always get a surprise when the process is complete. There is very little that you can control. The dye does what it wants and you get these wonderful textures. Sometimes you even get hidden pictures. Do you see the little men all standing in a row? This is a close-up shot of part of the fabric piece above. It looks like a totally different piece of fabric. I have no idea what I'll do with this piece, but I love the way the dyes mixed together and created different colors and textures. Here is a close-up shot of the fabric piece above. Quilt guild is tonight and I'll be showing my hand-dyes during show and tell tonight.