Rainbows of Happiness

          Thanks for being patient while I got all of these fat quarters ironed so that I could take proper pictures. For those of you who are just tuning in, I took a class from Vivan Helena last weekend in the scenic foothills just south of Yosemite. We learned how to hand-dye fabrics.

          I chose to experiment with two kinds of fabrics--mostly because I already had a huge stash of PFD (prepared for dyeing) Kona cotton yardage that I had bought online many years ago at a very low price. I was a little concerned since the fabric had a slight cream tint to it, but the results were lovely:

 

          The Kona cotton dyed a little lighter than my second fabric, but there was more mottling with the pure aqua as well as with any of the mixes that contained aqua. In my book, that is a good thing. After all, if I had even entertained the thought of learning to dye fabric so that it was a uniform solid color, I would have just simply bought it ready-made. I prefer fabrics and colors that are more artistic and original.

 

          I was thrilled with the mottling of the yellow dye. It swirled beautifully with the red.

 

          The yellow also made sort of a floating greenish patina on top of the aquamarine.

 

 

          These are the fat quarters I dyed using the very white Hoffman PFD cotton that is used for batiks. The colors turned out a little more intense with this fabric, and the mottling was more defined in the reds, yellows, and purples.

 

          I was pleasantly surprised that I had a little bit of the white fabric still peeking through since those fat quarters were the ones that were completely submerged at the bottom of the dyeing jars. However, I had been very careful not to stir the contents of the jars, or poke the fabric down with the sticks Vivan gave us.

 

          As you can see below, the greens are not all that different from one another.

 

          The warm tones were extraordinary. I will definitely be doing more of this hand-dyeing.

Llamas, Llamas, Love Their Mama

          Vivian has all kinds of cool things going on at her house. Besides all her artsy, craftsy projects, she's got llamas. Yes, I said llamas. Four of them. I couldn't wait to get there and get my llama fix.

 

          Here is Vivian feeding grain by hand to three of her brood. I don't recall their names, but she let me feed the dark brown one that is standing behind her in the picture.

 

 

          As you can see, this one has quite a coat. Vivian has used some of the fibers in the past for various projects, including dying some of the lighter wool. I do believe she waited until the coat was no longer on the llama before she did that. :-)

 

 

          This llama was more interested in posing for all the cameras than eating grain. Quite a ham!