Lisa Call

We’re home! Yesterday was a long day with movers and packing and cleaning but I’ve turned over the keys to the old house and said goodbye. It feels great to be in our new place. The yard isn’t much as the house has been a rental for the past 10 years but the place has huge potential.

Many have asked me how I can fit 4000 sq ft of stuff into 900 sq ft. So far the answer is "not so well" but give me a few weeks and I’ll have it whipped into shape.

This is my bedroom and computer room.

 
Yes - it’s also my studio. All 3 crammed into 10′x12′. Not quite the same as the dedicated 600 sq ft studio I just left. Still, I intend to make amazing art in this space and I have plans in the future for a larger studio, just not exactly sure how that will play out yet.

There is currently no where to sit or walk in the living room/office but we’ll figure out something. I have storage space in my studio/bedroom for all of my artwork (rolled up on the couch) but in the meantime my cat is taking care of them. [those are older traditional quilts on top - not my artwork - cats stay off the artwork]

 
A view of the dining room/music room. An upright player piano takes up a lot of space (as does my rolltop desk which can’t decide if it’s in the living room or the dining room).

 
Standing on the piano bench affords us a view of the kitchen/laundry room. Yes indeed the washing machine sits right next to my stove. I can do some serious multitasking with this set up.

 
The true state of that dining room/music room. There won’t be much eating in there for a while.

 
There is no basement but fortunately there is a largish 1 car garage so it’s the house annex and part of the laundry room as the dryer lives out here.

 
And then there is the stuff that didn’t fit in either place. Hm… Garage sale anyone?

 
I’m too exhausted to unpack today so I’m just relaxing. Almost. Tomorrow I’m leaving town for a week long visit to Montana with my family. We will be burying my father’s ashes (he passed away last fall). I’m really looking forward to seeing the family and more of Montana. My sister and I will be spending the first 3 nights of our trip visiting hot springs with our kids. My only plans - sleep, relax, eat, relax, read, relax, get massage, relax, etc.

I’ll deal with the organization when I return. I will also send out my June newsletter when I return, in early July. Didn’t quite make that goal. Moving is a LOT of work!

 
 

Fabric Sketches - Structures Series

 
I very rarely preplan my quilts. The designs generally emerge as I am working directly with the fabric.

On a rare occasion I’ll sketch out an idea on paper but that usually happens during meetings at work when my mind is wandering. Although most of those drawings end up pasted into my sketchbook and rarely, if ever, turn into an actual quilt.

At times I also make fabric sketches. It’s all fine and good doodling out a pencil and paper drawing of what I want to do but it’s much more helpful for me to actually see the idea in fabric. Not only do I see a concrete example of what I had in mind but it also helps me work through how I will actually construct the idea in fabric.

I have to admit I tend to restrict most of my fabric sketching to workshop situations, and in fact first learned of their usefulness from Nancy Crow during a class, but I have done a few at home also. I never finish my sketches into actual quilts as their purpose is not a completed product but just a quick try at a new idea.

The above sketches are all about the size of a piece of notebook paper (maybe 8" x 12"). I made them in the fall of 2005 in Sand Point, Idaho at the Nancy Crow workshop. One of the things I was thinking about at that time was leaving more open space in my work because I tend to fill up all available space with lines. These sketches were working through some ideas I had about how to go about doing that.

I never followed through on many of these but while hunting around in my studio the other day I came across them. There are still a lot of good ideas in here that I will think about more and maybe they will eventually show up in some finished work.

 
The sketch below was made a few days before making my first Markings quilt. I had the idea of doing the parallel lines, like cross hatching in drawing, a few months before hand but I needed to see it in fabric before I started off on the first in the series. Sometimes it takes a few tries at making a fabric sketch of an idea to get a good handle on my thoughts. But for the Markings series this one sketch was it. One quick fabric sketch and I was sure I had and idea I wanted to explore.

 

Fabric Sketch - Markings Series
 

Time to finish up my post on dyeing fabric.

First, to tie it all together here are links to the previous posts:

• An overview of my dyeing process
• Information on the fabric I use
• Information on the dye and other chemicals I use and more on the process

After getting the dye solutions into the fabric I let my fabric cure over night. I find I get my best results if the first few hours the fabric is in the sun (okay in this picture the sun is actually behind a cloud - but you get the idea):

I believe the required temperature is 70 degrees (F) but I think pushing 90 or 100 results in deeper colors. Which means I do most of my dyeing during the summer as my house rarely gets near 70 in the winter. Although we have excellent sun in Colorado so if I time it well I can set my fabric in the sun in my laundry room and it will get warm enough.

I let the fabric cure over night. Technically it only needs to cure a few hours before washing and on a few occasions I have dyed large pieces for quilt backs and washed it this quickly and it was fine. But I am paranoid and I prefer to let it sit overnight, just in case. I’ve let it sit several days and once I found a piece that had been curing in my basement for months and it all washes out fine.

This is my laundry room:

I start filling up my washing machine with cold water.

I take the bins of fabric and set them in the sink the left of the washing machine and lift each yard of fabric out of the bin and put them into the washer one at a time - I might squeeze a bit of water out first but I don’t worry about it much.

I used to get all stressed and do a bunch of hand rinsing before dumping it into the washing machine but this takes much too long and made no practical difference from what I could tell.

I do the first wash on cold - no soap or chemicals. This removes 1 part of the equation for the chemical bonding to occur - heat. So there is little to no color transfer from one fabric to another. If there is I don’t worry, it just adds a bit of interest to the fabric or I can cut that chunk off. I spill more colors onto each other during the dyeing process than is transfered during washing. Some people put in synthrapol here and I probably used to but I don’t see much difference if I don’t.

After this first wash most of the soda ash is also gone. So it is unlikely that any more bonding will take place. Now the goal is to get all of the excess dye molecules off the fabric (and any lingering soda ash and salt). I figure leaving excess chemicals on the fabric can’t be a good thing in the long run.

So I do 2 long washes in hot hot water (I turn my water heater to maximum heat before rinsing my fabric and make sure it has fully reheated before doing another load).

In the first hot wash I put in a bit of synthrapol - a detergent that is supposedly great at bonding to the lose dye molecules so it can be rinsed away (you can read the details of how this works here).

In the second hot wash I put in regular laundry detergent (I used Tide Free).

I check the water after this second wash and if it runs clear (95% of the time it does) I consider it done. If not I will do a 3rd hot wash.

After washing I transfer it all to the dryer and dry for about 20-30 minutes, until it is just barely damp.

From there it all gets ironed flat and folded to fit into my fabric bins. A few years back I splurged and bought the nice closet storage stuff from the Container store - I want one more unit - maybe that will be my Christmas present to myself this year:

This is the last batch of fabric I dyed a week ago:

In one of my previous dye posts I showed this bin of fabric with one of the colors I mixed:

This is the resulting fabric:

I love ironing the new fabric after I’ve just dyed it. It takes a while but I get so many great ideas for quilts during this process. Seeing all those yummy new colors and thinking about designs and color combinations. It’s not a process to rush and something I do look forward to.

On a very serious note, I would be most remiss if i did not mention how dangerous these dyes are. When in their powder form they are extremely toxic and a mask must be worn when handling them. Gloves should be worn at all times to reduce exposure to the liquid dyes also. Don’t dye in your kitchen, don’t eat the dye. Don’t feed it to your cat, etc. Just be safe, read the manufacturer’s warnings, etc, etc.

One thing to be aware of is that if you spill any liquid dye and don’t wipe it up, the water will evaporate leaving just the dye powder (they dye in it’s most toxic state) behind. So I am careful to wipe up spills when done.

But this is dye I’m wiping up and I hate to see it go to waste. So I wipe up my spills with a piece of fabric, which I then wash with all the other fabrics and the result is usually fairly interesting:

These pieces were used to wipe up spills through 3 or 4 different dyeing sessions (they are pretty boring after just one). I don’t have much use for these fabrics since I use only solids but I do this anyway. I have used a few on the backs of my quilts and that’s fun.

If you have any questions about dyeing just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.

A continuation of my fabric dyeing posts. The first here the second here.

Procion MX Dyes come as a powder and there are many recipes for mixing dye concentrates. As I mentioned on the TV website I don’t really measure anything. So it’s best you look else for specific recipes. I add some dye powder to some water along with some urea - not very informative. I suggest Ann Johnston’s book Color By Accident.

I mix my dye concentrates in 20 ounce water bottles. I mix a few pure red, yellow and blues and a few of the other pure procion dye colors. Each in its own water bottle. I rarely buy a mixed color figuring I can mix it myself - although the grays and blacks can be useful).

I use a funnel to get the dye powder and urea into the bottle first:

Then add warm water and shake until it all dissolves. Some dyes are more cooperative than others.

Then comes the fun part - mixing colors. I mix together 1 cup of the dye concentrates (I add water if I want a lighter color). I test my combination on my fabric to make sure I’m getting a color I want. The wet fabric doesn’t really look like the final washed and dried color but over time you get a feel for how it changes - although I’m still surprised at times.

In this example the dye mixture I made started out too pink so I added blue and yellow to get it more to my liking:

Once it seems right I dump the color onto the fabric:

Wearing rubber gloves, which should be worn throughout the entire process as the dyes are toxic, I mush the dye into the fabric. The more mushing the more solid the color. I go for a lot of mushing as I like a fairly solid colored fabric:

Next comes the soda ash, which changes the pH of the water and fiber so the chemical reaction can occur. You can buy it from the big dye houses but I bought a big bag from a pool supply store as it’s cheaper. I also bought urea from a feed supply store and use that instead of urea from the dye houses.

I add salt into my soda ash mixture. Although Ann Johnston’s low water immersion recipes don’t use salt I think the results are much better if some salt is added. I’ve never seen a recipe with salt so I don’t really have any idea how much to use so I just dump some in. I also am not exactly sure what the salt does but my theory is it forces the dye out of the water and into the fiber, but I could be making that up. I do know my colors are more saturated if I use salt.

I mix up several gallons of soda ash & salt at one time:

I put 1 cup of the soda ash solution into each of the bins of fabric and again mush it around.

After this round 1 is done. Basically repeat for as many layers as you want:

You can see round 2 is lighter than round 1 - there is less dye available to bond with the next piece of fabric as much of it has already bonded to the previous layer.

There are many variations on this method of dyeing. How long to wait between adding the different parts, whether or not to add soda ash in between layers. I suggest Ann’s book for details and other ideas. I found what works for me and stick with it. It’s pretty basic and simple and not meant to result in anything other than solid colors.

I think I’ll have one last post about dyeing - how I wash out the fabric. And also wrap up anything else I can think of.

I’m working on a few more posts about the dyeing but they aren’t quite ready.

This weekend I needed to dye the fabric for the back of a couple large quilts and I wanted a few more images for these posts, so my plan was to dye a couple yards just for demonstration. I’m not sure what happened but next thing I knew I had 70 yards in dye baths. Oops that wasn’t the plan, but more on dyeing tomorrow.

A while back someone (maybe Shelia?) asked me about how I signed and labeled my work so I took some photos last time I did labels.

I run off the labels with the title, my name, copyright symbol, email and website address on my computer printer. I iron the fabric down onto freezer paper and cut it 8.5" x 11". It likes to jam a lot so I sometimes tape this to a regular piece of paper to get it to actually feed through the printer. After printing I sign the label with a pigma pen.

These are the labels after I printed them - they generally coordinate with the backing fabric and you can see I use scraps left over from previous labels whenever possible.

I remove the paper, trim, and then turn the edges under:

As I currently have 15-20 quilt tops in need of quilting I’ve been basting a several quilts at once. These labels are for quilts recently finished or soon to be.

In addition to this fabric label, which is sewn to the back of the quilt, I also sign the front right hand corner with thread during the quilting. I generally use a matching thread color so the signature isn’t very obvious and won’t distract from the work. This signature is more permanent than the label and is very difficult to remove (although it’s doable - I’ve removed a few and redone them).

A collector bought my piece during the opening of Quilt National 2005 in addition to a smaller piece in the gift shop. Even though I had signatures on the work he requested to the staff that I sign the work again - so in the middle of the show I had to sign my name across the back of these 2 quilts in big sharpie marker. It felt a bit weird to write directly on the back of the quilts like that - almost like I was disfiguring the work, but if it made him happy, fine by me.

Structures #31 ©2004, 34"x53", in Quilt National 2005:

A continuation of my dyeing posts as a result of being on TV demonstrating how I dye fabric. The first is here.

I use Kaufman Pimatex PFD bleach white fabric when dyeing. Because I dye so much, I have an account with Kaufman to buy it direct. You can also buy this fabric online or in quilt and fabric stores.

It is a very tight weave fabric, which I prefer. I think it is more durable than the dyer’s muslins and much easier to work with. Some people say they have a hard time getting a needle through the fabric when sewing by hand but it doesn’t bother me. I do have to bring samples of the fabric with me when I get my sewing machine tuned up so they can adjust the hook closer to the needle to keep it from skipping during the piecing.

This fabric is also PFD, which means Prepared For Dye, which generally means they do not have permanent press, optical brighteners, or other resin finishes that interfere with dyeing. It is also mercerized so it takes the dye well. I never prewash the fabric before dyeing because it comes off the bolt ready to go.

This is 200 yards of brand new fabric on the bolt. It is not a pure white fabric but instead slightly off white. It came in a big box that I could not lift alone.

It would take a very long time to cut 60-80 single yard pieces of fabric with a rotary cutter or scissors. So instead I tear it. I put the bolt of fabric on the floor and unroll large sections of it. I then measure out about 37″ (it shrinks a bit - this is 100% cotton) and make a small snip through the selvedge and then tear it the rest of the width across.

This is a pile of maybe 20-30 yards of fabric. There are occasional strings from the tearing that I do my best to ignore. With practice you can minimize this but it still happens a bit.

To start off the dyeing process I’ll take a mound of fabric and jam it into a 5 gallon bucket and add hot/warm water to get the fabric wet. I think Ann Johnston says in her recipe to use a cup of water per yard but it would take way too long to measure so I just get it wet - sometimes dripping wet, sometimes not. I can’t be bothered to worry if there is really at least a cup.

I then put 1 wet yard of fabric into each bin for the first round.

I’ll continue with describing the dye parts in another post. I’ve run out of pictures that are processed and ready for the blog.

As promised here is my first post with some more details about how I dye my fabric. These are not going to be presented in any sort of logical order but instead the order I felt like writing about them. So look for several dyeing posts over the next few weeks, in between other content.

First off my dyeing is based on Ann Johnston’s book Color By Accident. All credit for this basic technique belongs to her. Although I have to admit to never actually reading this book as I took a workshop with Ann and learned how to do this first hand.

I will not be repeating the information she has in her book. I strongly recommend you buy it and read it for yourself. But I will be talking about how I’ve modified her techniques to work for me.

To dye 60-100 yards of fabric in a few hours I user her technique of stacking fabrics one on top of another in the same bin. So follow the directions I have on the DIY website for the first layer of fabric. After a while take a second yard of fabric and lay it on top of the first and mush it around to soak up all the dye leftover from the first piece. Wait a bit and add the soda ash. Repeat for as many layers as you want noting that they get lighter as you add more fabric.

This bin has 3 different yellows:

Note that you will not get a perfect gradation of colors as you do this. Some dye molecules are larger than others so they bond quicker with the fabrics. It will probably take you some time and experimenting to see what happens and to anticipate these changes. But as with all of my dyeing I’m not looking for reproducible results, just gorgeous fabric. When your dark red has a light green 4 layers above it is at first puzzling. But you will eventually learn that reds are the first to go. Over time you learn to adjust for this in the process to get the colors you want.

With 4 layers of fabric in each bin (I dye 1 yard pieces of fabric) I only need 20 bins to hold 80 yards of fabric. Here’s what my table looked like after my last session (note that I don’t use fancy expensive containers for my dyeing - look for the freebies at garage sales - it doesn’t have look pretty - but remember - do not use any containers or equipment from your kitchen):

It takes me 3-4 hours to do the initial dyeing. I then let it cure over night and I find it works best if it sits in the sun at some point. In another post I’ll describe how I rinse all of this out as efficiently as possible.

I’ve been taking some in progress photos of quilts as I’ve been making them and am slowly getting them processed to document on the blog. Here are a few photos I took of Structures #53 during it’s creation almost 10 months ago. Admittedly I forgot I had these photos and I was hunting around for something to blog about that required little mental effort, as I had to work late tonight at the day job, and stumbled across these.

I work on a design wall, which you can see in my studio posting. The pieces of fabric are just stuck onto the wall during the design so I can step back and see how it looks during construction.

Step one - layout the background. At this point I’ve just folded the pieces of fabric to approximate their final size. One of the harder parts of making a quilt by piecing (sewing each seem so no raw edges show) is taking into account the seam allowances (I lose 1/2″ on each seam I make) and the extra bits that get chopped off here and there as I fit things together.

Next I select the colors for the lines for each block:

At this point I’ve cut the backgrounds so they aren’t just folded lumps up on the wall. Then I cut straight lines from the fabric for the figure and I get an idea of the layout of the motifs in the individual sections:

Then I skipped a bunch of pictures of cutting and sewing (I’ll have to show these steps in another quilt but now I think I might have skipped photographing this step in most of the pieces as it seems rather obvious to me. Hm, maybe it isn’t.) but here is the finished quilt top before basting and quilting:

Without being able to see the details of the quilting stitch the top looks a lot like the finished quilt. The color in this completed photo is more accurate (although maybe not perfect - photography and photoshop are definitely not my strong points) as it is taken outdoors instead of with a flash with very suboptimal studio lighting.

Structures #53 ©2006    66"x41":

Detail:

This piece went together quickly with little dithering on my part as to what might work. Some of my pieces I have dozens of photos of possibilities that I take looking for the right combination of colors, shapes, and lines. I definitely love it when it comes together as easily as this piece.

I’ve received several questions about my thread post so I thought I’d answer them in a new post instead of my normal plan of answering questions in the comments. I was going to write about art school tonight in response to some very interesting posts I read last week on other blogs but that can wait another day.

First thanks for all the compliments on my over-organization. I agree with Omega’s comment on my last post, the organization of the supplies is part of the creative process.

I stopped using rayon, polyester and metallic threads back in 2000 or 2001 when I started making exclusively pieced abstract quilts from my handdyed cottons. I don’t feel the glitz and shine of the specialty threads matches with the work I’m making now. The cotton thread provides exactly the look I’m after, so that’s all I use.

This has the added benefit of not having to deal with the hassle of those threads breaking and shredding as they go zipping through the sewing machine. Nor the hassle of experimenting with different needle types trying to find one that works with each specific thread. I love the process of making quilts but all that technical fussing is just not for me. I like simple.

I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with these threads. They just aren’t for me.

I always use matching thread in the bobbin when quilting and piecing. It takes a bit more time to wind and change the bobbin but I think it’s worth it to not have some unmatched color poke through here and there. The tension on a sewing machine is not rocket science and no matter how well adjusted there are times the bobbin thread can be seen from the top and I find matching thread colors in the bobbin results in a nicer looking sewn line.

This means I have a large stock of bobbins. One per thread color plus extras because when I’m piecing I will wind 10-15 bobbins of tan or gray (the colors I use when piecing 99% of the time) so I don’t have to stop and wind bobbins very often.

I also need a way of keeping track of which bobbin matches which spool of thread. And for that I use handi bobs from Nancy’s Notions. They attach to the top of the spool of thread and hold the bobbin in place. Here’s a close up view of some of the spools on the thread rack with their bobbins.

 
As to the batting. Warm and Natural used to have seeds in it, long ago. I actually wrote an FAQ about batting in 1993 that mentions the cotton seed oil. You can still find the FAQ on the internet here, too bad most of that information is out of date.

I called many of the batting manufacturers when I wrote some of that as I was doing research for a program I presented at my local quilt guild. It was interesting research. If you want to know something about a specific batting just call up the manufacturer. They were more than happy to chat with me and many sent me samples.

To quote the current information from the manufacturer about warm and natural:

The soft, natural cotton goes through a gentle mechanical cleaning to pick out cotton plant and seed remnants. The tiny plant particles that remain lend a special look to crafts when used as an exterior fabric and will not damage your fabric when used in your quilt.

I have never had a problem with Warm and Natural since they started cleaning the cotton before needle punching the batting. Beyond the color I’m not sure there is a difference between it and Warm and White. I prefer the natural colored batting because it hasn’t been subjected to bleaching to turn it white. Seems a bit nicer to the environment.

I recently bought 30 yards of plain white fabric (which I’m sure is bleached, just like the hundreds of yards of fabric that I dye each year) to challenge myself to try to use white in my work. I might have to use Warm and White batting in quilts with a lot of white in the design but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve used the Warm and Natural with some very light colored quilts and have never had a problem.

The materials an artist uses to make their artwork can make a huge difference on the ease or difficulty in creating the work. I’ve learned in my recent dabbling with painting that there are student quality paints and there are more expensive artist grade and you get what you pay for.

With quilting this rule also generally holds true. The higher quality materials are generally easier to work with and result in a better quality piece of art when finished.

My quilts are made of only 3 basic materials:

• A very dense weave 100% cotton fabric (Pimatex by Robert Kaufman) dyed with Procion MX fiber reactive dyes (these dyes create a chemical bond with the fiber vs. dyes from the grocery store that just stain the fiber)
• A high quality cotton batting (warm and natural). This is the middle layer sandwiched in between 2 layers of cotton cloth.
• Long staple 100% cotton thread used to sew the top design together and also to “quilt” the piece, holding the 3 layers together by adding a secondary textured design over the top of the composition.

An example of quilting stitches in Structures #42:

 
I use 2 types of thread in my quilting. Most of it is Mettler Silk Finish 100% Mercerized Cotton 50 weight thread. You can find this thread in most quilting stores.

I used to just buy thread at random and hope I had the right colors when it came time to quilt a quilt. I thrive on efficiency and this approach quickly resulted in too many emergency trips to the quilt store to buy more thread so now I have it inventoried in an excel spreadsheet and I try to keep 2-3 spools of each color on hand so I never run out in the middle of the night. With 190 colors I currently have about 500 spools in my inventory.

My thread is stored by color (and then by manufacturer color number) on 4 thread racks above my sewing machine. The mettler threads are ones on the left and lower right racks. The thread in the upper right are rayon threads that I no longer use and are soon to be replaced by more spools of cotton thread.

I’ve been doing a lot of quilting the last few months and not keeping track of the empty spools as I quilt so I’ve found myself running out recently. So last week I finally dumped out my bin of empties and figured out what I needed to replenish. This is about 100 spools of thread.

Fortunately thread was on sale at Great American Quilt Factory last Friday so I saved about $70 on my pile of thread. I don’t buy anything else at the quilt store anymore and I get the feeling not many people buy as much thread as I do because the sales clerks have taken to calling me “the thread lady”. With their inventory system it takes about 15 minutes to check out as they have to scan each spool separately. This is about 150 spools of thread.

I keep one spool of each color on the rack. The remaining spools are sorted by number and stored in bags in a drawer next to my sewing machine. If a spool runs out while I’m sewing I can reach down and pull out a replacement (quickly locating it because the bags are labeled by number, and of course I store the bags sorted in order in the drawer).

These are the spares - about 300 spools.

Recently I have been able to purchase Valdani threads through a friend at wholesale prices. These are gorgeous hand dyed long staple 100% cotton threads, also 50 weight, and they come in colors not available in the Mettler. These are the large spools in the middle on the right hand side and they will eventually displace the rayon threads.

I don’t have very many of these yet but I’m slowly working my way into purchasing all of the available colors of these also. I just ordered 40 more spools of the Valdani and each year I plan on adding more.

I’ve only been able to find 190 of the 196 available Mettler colors also. I need to visit a few other quilt shops some day and see if I can find the missing 6. I’ve never compared my list to the manufacturers color list (which I just found today) but it’s definitely high on my curiosity list to see what I’m missing.

It’s expensive to add a second manufacturer to my thread inventory but I believe in what I’m doing and I know that having more choices of colors will result in my best work. Not having the supplies at hand when they are needed can really slow down or compromise a project. I think it’s worth the investment up front because unlike paint, I can’t just mix up a new thread color when the need arises.