Last weekend I was able to give myself the excuse to do one of my favourite things – dying fabrics to create pieces of gorgeous colour.

I was preparing for the forthcoming class, where we will be making an Amish-inspired small quilt or wall hanging.  The Amish traditionally use plain fabrics that would have come originally from the remnants of their clothing – blacks, blues, dark reds etc.  Depending upon the specific Amish community, different colours would be used – some communities might use purples, others might use muted pinks or golds.  Some would not use much black – this is scope for a whole blog post of its own!

I realised I had no muted solids – fabrics that are of that plain, subdued range.  And I really didn’t want to buy any more – there’s barely space to move for fabric as it is!

So I got out some of my calico and after much consideration chose to dye using pure magenta, indigo and a mix of magenta and turquoise.

Look at the results.

You can see the three shades of magenta/turquoise at the top, the pure magenta over on the left, and the indigo in the bottom half.

They had been rinsed but not yet washed – when the colour would change, but hopefully not too much.

Working with turquoise is always tricky as it never takes as well as other dye colours.  I had originally remembered that and so put extra turquoise in the dye-bath.  Then panicked because it was VERY blue, so added a little more magenta.

After a good wash in the machine this is what we now have!  Actually the true colours are a little stronger than you can see here and although I have to admit to being a tad disappointed that they are not so much what I had in mind, they are very lovely shades!

The adventure with dying fabrics is always to be open to the possibilities and not to have expectations that are too fixed.