Brand New Dye

Here are my new fabric dyes for this year. The Procion dye has a limited shelf life in unused form, so I get all new each spring.

These are the colors I picked this year. It's the same yellow and same blue I bought last year, but I picked a new black and blue and red and purple.


Purple is the only secondary color I bought. Orange and green are easy to make, but when I've made purple, its been dull. Last year I bought purple already made and it was better. I can adjust it by adding blue or red, but I find that I have to start with purple dye.

I'll try mixing red and blue this year too. Maybe these versions of red and blue will work better.

I dyed it so parts of the fabric would dye lighter and I could get a better feel for the color. I like the brown better than last year's. Last year's was too red and I had to adjust it a lot.


This black is good too. Last years black had a green tinge that I didn't like.

I also made green and orange by adding each seperately to the dye bath in different places so I could get a good picture of how they blended.

My first project will be floor cloths. I have some 10oz cotton duck. I cut two pieces about 2x3 and preshrunk them on big plastc pipes. I'm just waiting for them to dry.

I guess the 10oz duck will be my new thing for June.


On Sunday, I fired up the Juki LZ and got it threaded with some 40wt poly thread. This was the first time I used the new bobbin case and the thread I got from ThreadArt.

I quilted a saddlepad panel. It was fun. I was afraid at first because the machine is so powerfull. But I got used to it.

Mary Shelley and Whiskers are not used to me being in the garage, but the machine is set up there. They argued about which one of them got to sit next closest to me.

Dave and Joseph helped me a lot yesterday, Monday. Both had the day off. They came to the barn and cleaned out the water trough that Janow shares with Mucha. They saved the mosquito fish and scooped about two gallons of black goop out of the bottom after they siphoned out the water. Janow drops mouthfulls of food in it.


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