Going Green

This is Lorna's Presidents quilt that she made from the blocks guild members made for her as the end of her term as president of our guild in 2010. She asked for bright colored fabrics and provided the pattern for the two different blocks. This is the largest quilt I have ever quilted..... 102" x122"!  She wanted a geometric quilting design and I suggested Spiral Square.  I used green variegated Lava thread on the top.

Lorna also asked me to dye the backing green to match the sashing fabric and she had 4 meters of 108" wide backing in white.   Yet another record....the largest backing I have ever dyed!  I got out my dyeing 'recipe' book and found a few colored that matched the green sashing and did a few test dyes to make sure I could reproduce my original samples. Here is the result....

Not a bad match eh!

Now I do have a story to share to go along with this dyeing project.  You see 4m of 108" wide backing is a lot of fabric, especially when you do most of your dyeing in buckets in the kitchen sink!  Now I had a big enough bucket to dye it in but when it came to rinsing it that was a bit trickier. So I got the bright idea to rinse the fabric in my brand new white bathtub.....can you see where this is going?   As I was happily swishing the fabric around in the tub so pleased I had all this room to give the fabric a good rinse I finally clued into the fact the sides of the tub were turning green!  How could I be so stupid!!   I threw the fabric back into the bucket...without squeezing it out... and ran for some bathroom cleaners and a scrub brush.  After furiously scrubbing the tub the green finally came off!  Whew, what a relief.  Not that my boys would care if they showered in a green tub but it would have definitely bother me.

So the moral of the story is...I need my hubby to build me a dyeing room with a large stainless steel tub, well that's what I learnt out of this experience anyway  :)