I had the niggling feeling that there was some "experimenting" that I was leaving out of yesterday's post, and this morning I remembered two things.
Some time ago I bought a copy of Diana Boston's The Patchworks of Lucy Boston, and admired the quilts -- of course -- but put aside the thought of paper piecing as just too labor-intensive. Imagine my amused contrition when not long ago I browsed through the book again and thought, "You know, self, I think I'd like to try that after all ...." It was partly the capability of using "oddly-shaped" pieces that aren't particularly easy to do when machine-piecing (though "odd shapes" aren't usually something that appeals to me), but more just the intrinsically-pleasing effect of Mrs. Boston's quilts that spoke to me, as well as the pleasure that I am taking more and more in "slow" needlework. You can't really do this kind of quilting by machine. And so I ordered a small stash of paper shapes, deciding to start with a simple table runner using some William Morris fabric reprints I bought years ago.
This kind of paper-piecing really is as labor-intensive as it sounds -- you have to baste the fabric to the paper shape, stitch two basted shapes together, then add more shapes one at a time, all by hand -- though it is more the tedious kind of intensiveness, not the exhausting kind. I must admit, though, that I'm very impressed with the tidiness of the results -- the intersections where my four tumbler blocks meet are pretty much perfect, even from a novice such as myself! So we will see how it goes ...
There are varying opinions about whether it's okay to dye fabric with coffee and/or tea -- the thought is that the acids in coffee and tea will eventually degrade the fibers in the fabric, and popular knowledge says specifically that tea-dyed cotton will begin to degrade in 30 to 40 years, and coffee-dyed in 75 to 100 years. On the other hand, some dyers such as R&R Reproductions say that it isn't a problem, that "the acid content in coffee and espresso specifically] has been tested and approved by museums all over the U.S." Of course, "degrading" is not only subjective in itself -- is that a bit of fuzz here and there, or does the whole thing just dissolve into a mass of loose fibers?! -- but much I'm sure depends on the conditions in which the fabric is kept -- framed (under glass or not), acid-free storage or not, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, I thought I'd try it on some fabrics intended for samplers and see what the results look like.
This is Cashel cotton on the left and linen at the bottom, both from Zweigart (with its distinctive red selvedge). Both were dyed in the same batch of cold brew made with Seattle's Best house blend, though with slightly different methods and times, so it was interesting to see that although the linen was in the coffee bath for about a half-hour it is darker than the cotton, which soaked for at least ninety minutes! Both are a fairly unexceptional ecru in real life, so I suspect that in future I will leave the dyeing to the professionals or at least the more-dedicated-to-it than I!
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