Getting Ready For Quilter's Of South Carolina Retreat.

Today I am trying to get my things together for the QSC retreat this weekend.  But before I get to that I want to show a special gift I received from Suzanne's husband Vince.

It is a seam ripper.  He knows I love pink and he make the pink handle himself.  Isn't it beautiful!  Thanks for such special friends.

Now to preparing for retreat.

In looking at the class I will be taking "Cotton Candy Pinwheels" below, I decided that I did not want to make it in pink...

 

I also did not want to go buy fabric......so to my stash I went.  I pulled these fabrics from my stash.  When I saw the pinwheels and the poinsettia red fabric I thought of a Christmas quilt.

I decided to use the red poinsettia fabric as the pinwheels and piano key border, the green for sashing, the gold for corner stones in the sashing and border and the cream for the background and piano key border.  Thus my plan was set.

 

Next to see what I could cut prior to the class.  The instructor had said that we could cut our background fabric into 20- 14-inch blocks.  O.K. but when I looked at my fabric requirements I needed 6 1/2 yards of the cream fabric....dang!  I searched all through my stash and only had this 3 yard piece.  And I am not going to the fabric store!!  But I did have a bolt of Kona white.......I really wanted the muted cream background and not stark white.......so now what????

 

 So I decided to dye some of the fabric.  I cut 7 yards off of the bolt and went to work putting some rubberbands around different areas to add some texture.

 I then put the fabric in hot water in the bath tub, added some liquid fabric dye in yellow/gold and browns.

 

Then I steeped some tea bags and added the hot tea and bags to the bath.  Then I let it all steep in the tub for several hours.



 



Now this is what the fabric looks like after soaking, rinsing and drying.  It turned out a soft cream color.  A lot of trouble to just darken the fabric slightly, but I think it will be calmer in the quilt.

 

Here is a picture of my blocks cut 14 x 14. 

 

If you can tell the fabric is soft cream with hints of texture and faint yellow splotches from dropping in the additional colors.  It's not quite as dark cream as the original fabric I pulled from my stash but I think I am happy with this.

I better get back to work packing up my supplies now. 

Happy Quilting,

Shelia