Beautiful New Hand Dyed Treasures...

This past Monday, I debuted my new "Dare to Dye" lecture/trunk show for the Gateway Quilters Guild in Merced, CA.  To add a splash of color to my slide show, I treated myself to not one but two days of fabric dyeing!!  A bright batch of fuschia, lemon yellow and turquoise dyes was mixed up amd were used to dye almost 16 yards of Pimatex cotton over the course of the two dye days.

This first round of fabrics are the results of some experimentation with  pleating, clamping and tying to create some awesome patterned designs.  While I love the organic stripes, I was especially delighted by the furry face that stared back at me in the center chevron fabric (which was only visible on one side)!

Pretty Prismatic Patterns

I had a lot of fun using the scrunched technique to conduct some colorful experiments.  I began by combining just two primary colors to create some pretty spectacular colorbursts...

Fuschia and Yellow Create a Fiery Burst of Colors!!

Turquoise and Fuschia Combine Perfectly into Purples

Yellow and Turquoise into Green Gradations

Then it was time to combine all three primary colors to achieve even more brilliant colorbursts...

Sampling of My Brilliant Bursts of Color

While I don't usually enjoy ironing, I sure do love pressing all my hand dyed beauties after they come out from the rinsing process.  This is my first opportunity to really examine the beautiful color combinations and patterns that occur as the dyes interact with one another!  I especially enjoyed pressing out my new hand dyed mandalas that are each approximately 22" square.  I am eager to enhance their beauty with some free-motion quilting to create wholecloth quilted mandalas. The hard part will be deciding which one to quilt first!!!

Hand Dyed Mandalas Ready for Quilting

I sure hope you had as much fun viewing these vivid fabric creations as I had creating them!!!!