Today I was supposed to show you how to quilt our apple from last time, but it snowed here. It is the first snowfall of the season and I hope not the last one in this year.
If there is snow falling, I have to drop everything and rushed to dye.
Before starting to dye, I first soaked my fabrics in soda ash.
Net I spun them lightly and started arranging them in baskets I prepared earlier.
Once the fabrics were ready in the baskets, it was time to bring the snow. I find that the best method for this part is my husband with a shovel.
The boxes filled up with snow are ready, it is time to dye.
I made sure to cover the baskets with a lot of snow.
Then I began to spread the dye all over the snow.
Ready.
It is so convenient to have a basement with a utility room. I cannot imagine doing this kind of dyeing inside the house.
The snow melts fairly quickly, but I always wait twenty-four hours, so that the dye has a chance to fully soak into the fabric. Next, each piece of fabric was rinsed under running cold water and then washed in a small washing machine, which I use only for rinsing dyed fabrics.
I repeated the dyeing process several times. Unfortunately, I had to take a break because I got another job to do.
A friend of mine asked me to quilt a bedcover. My job was to quilt two layers of fleece and to sew on a pre-prepared applique. The size of the quilt was supposed to be 3×3 meters.
The frame in my long-arm is technically over 3 meters long but considering the size of this quilt it is extremely hard to quilt it. You cannot fully stabilize the fabric and this one is especially unstable. Two layers of thick, fluffy, with a light “fur coat” made it so that my long-arm was hard to move. Anyone who has quilted this kind of fabric before can easily imagine how hard it is. On the beginning I thought I would just quilt the applique only, but I decided to quilt meanders on the whole quilt.
When I was laying down the applique onto the quilted top everything was smooth and even.
However, after I took everything off from the long arm, it turned out that the applique did not stick nicely to the top. I could have quilted it more, but it would have made the top very stiff. This causes the fabric to have an effect as if it were waving in the wind. In the photo everything looks nice. Here, you can see the size of the quilt, which covered up my entire dining room. The next challenge was to trim it because the fabric has a life of its own and arranges itself as it wants.
After trimming I had to hem it with an overlock stitch to stop it from fraying.
The only thing left to do is to sew around the binding and my friend will be able to take it home.
And finally, a few photos of the winter from my garden.
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