Dyeing to Play

In 2003, I decided that I wanted to make a series of quilts using only the 6 different fabrics that I had dyed or overdyed in 4 different colours.

six colour bundles

The 6 original fabrics were:

an unbleached muslin,

a black and white check,

a small floral print (light yellow background – yellow, red, blue flowers),

a large pink floral,

a blue, orange,green and yellow wavy stripe,

a large piece of my own multi-coloured hand-dyed that still had a lot of white showing.

large floral and stripes

My idea was to used 3 fabrics in primary colours, a multi-colour fabric and 2 neutrals and dye them in 3 primary colour and a neutral.

multi-coloured and muslin

Each fabric was divided into 4 equal pieces. One piece of each was dyed in each of the following colours:

Golden Yellow (yellow)

Turquoise (blue)

Burgundy (red)

Soft Brown (neutral)

Here's a page from my notebook showing the original striped fabric and the four colour samples.

The size of the pieces were anywhere from slightly larger than a fat quarter to one and a half metre.

This is what the multi-coloured fabric looked like after being over-dyed with Turquoise

turquoise

And with Golden Yellow

golden yellow

So far, I have only made 3 quilts, using these fabrics and I really think it is high time to kick in a few more.

The next three posts will feature Dyeing to Play I, II and III.

Come back and see.

Terry