baby quilt beginnings

hand-dyed, half-square-triangles

Recently, I have found the joy of hand-dying unbleached muslin.  I have discovered that the fiber-reactive dying process, is quite therapeutic.  There is something about the repetition, and the physical labor, that makes dying feel so productive to me.  Although, saturated colors are totally obtainable, I have found myself most attracted to the slightly off-target, grayed-out, jewel-tones.  

In our recent and epic move, we acquired an extra bathroom, which we rightly dubbed 'the death bathroom' (I'll post photos later).  It's become the perfect haven for free-for-all, un-tarped, dyeing adventures!  

Dyeing in the 'death bathroom' has proven to be productive, with relatively little fabric wasted. I'm proud to be saving money by skipping the cut yardage of muslin available at big fabric chains.  I am totally in love with the unbleached muslin bolt I ordered from Dharma Trading Co. http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/3623-AA.shtml?lnav=fabric_cotton.html (I have more to rave about later).  So after a few 'death bathroom' dye-sessions I had a hefty stack of inspiring, mottled tones to draw from.

playing with setting options

At some point, after playing around with the array of tones, I mused "I'm making sad-colored baby quilts!"  With this proclamation I was off, ironing and rotary-cutting strips, all while eye-balling the general size of the finished block. This process included many wizard-like hand gestures, and much audible chanting of measurements, in the background plays http://youtu.be/Lx120yg_JDk, a Cat Power cover of Moonshiner, by Bob Dylan.

After this ritual ceased, I figured a little brush-up of 'half-square-triangle' construction was in order.  It's almost always helpful for me to see how other folks approach quilt piecing.  I found a 'trick' method here: http://youtu.be/33JliXpyiYE.  I made a few samples, but found an issue with the bias distorting after assembling a complete block.  The result was wonky (yes, it's a technical term, when referring to off-grain disasters). But really, it looked so promising.  

After referencing a few favorite, well-worn quilting books, and with the instruction I found here: http://youtu.be/Mym8D06ZQ-g.  I easily constructed a more accurate test sample, free from distortion.

baby quilt coming to life

I have pieced several hand-dyed quilt tops in the last few weeks, and I am looking forward to sharing my process with you.