More hot day activities.

We are having a heat wave at the moment.  It seems to be right across Australia - you would think we were a small country when you see the weather maps that have  a high affecting all the states. I watch the international weather forecasts occasionally and there is such a variation in quite small countries, England, for instance.  This is a phenomenal heatwave, making all the news.

It was too hot to go out so I was tempted to lie on my bed.  Then I got up a little energy and decided to finish off a sample I am trying.
I bought Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art ages ago and just put it on the shelf.  A few days ago I got it out and started browsing. There is some beautiful stuff in there!

I also have a copy of Quilting Modern which I have been browsing for a few months now, I have just not had much time to play around with ideas from it.

I decided that this week after the Christmas/New Year break would be a good time to play around and see what I could come up with.  It turns out that Stitching to Dye has some activities to try.  Of course I didn't do the sampling that is recommended, I just launched into the first exercise.

It involves making a patchwork piece and then quilting it, then dyeing it using Procion MX dyes.  As I started doing this when the shops were shut, I rummaged around and found pieces of white and off-white quilting fabrics as well as some cheap cottons I had bought for printing and dyeing.  So I cut them up to make a log cabin design.  Quilting Modern encouraged me to ignore the usual rules and not worry about measuring exactly, which suited my mood perfectly.

If you look closely, you will see that some of the fabrics have screen printed patterns on them.

Both books have various free motion quilting patterns for me to try out too.

So I did that.  Being frugal (and the shops still being shut) I unearthed some cotton thread from quite a few years ago (15??) and began to quilt the piece.  I don't know if it was the way I was doing the free motion quilting, the cotton or a combination, but the quilting was a nightmare!  The thread kept breaking or jumping out of being properly fed into the machine, it would work for a while and then it would miss stitches.  The needle fell out - something that seems to happen to me a bit when I am free motion quilting. Very frustrating.  I certainly won't win any prizes for the quilting.  But I decided not to change the thread as I didn't want the quilting to dye differently.  So I persevered.  Not great quilting but it IS just a sample.