Are you bored yet?

This morning we woke to a fresh fall of the white stuff and happily we didn't have to be anywhere.  Although the snow that came down seemed a bit light and not the big flakes type I thought I would have another crack at snow dyeing but this time using dye solutions.  

The fabrics were soda soaked and then piled up on inverted foil dishes to keep them out of the melting snow.

Procion MX dyes were prepared using a piece of the soda soaked fabric as a drop cloth to catch any loose powder and I wore a mask to save me inhaling any dye powder.  I used Bright Scarlet, Turquoise (which doesn't take well in cold temperatures but I like it) and Warm Black.  I was hoping that the warm black would split and give me some other colours.

I poured the colours on, scarlet first, then turquoise, then black but didn't use all the dye as I didn't want to get solid colour.  I forgot to put the dropcloth in the bowl so I bagged it up and poured the surplus turquoise and black carfeully onto it so that the colours mixed as little as possible.

I had a small accident with some spilt dye on the doormat so quickly soaked it up with a colour catcher.  I was really pleased with the pattern that the dye made on the catcher.

I left the fabric sitting under the snow until about 5 o'clock this evening and it's now out of the cold environment and batching in my warm studio in plastic.  We will have to be patient until tomorrow when I will rinse it all out.  So far the results look very promising but I didn't take any piccies of that stage, sorry.  

While the dye was doing its thing DH and I decided to take advantage of the lying snow to go for a  walk and take some photos.  

You can see why I didn't fancy taking the car out, our side road is a bit slippy and there's a slope to negotiate at the bottom.

A bit of inspiration in car tyre patterns,

and paw prints and sled tracks.

We didn't go very far, just across to a neighbouring housing estate which, at the moment affords a view across fields to Great Gonerby.

DH looks like one of those scarecrows that villages put out for scarecrow festivals :-)  If things go to plan these fields will soon be lost to 99 houses.  They just have to find a way of bridging the railway line.  

I havn't tweaked the light in the photo too much as the atmosphere was very muted.  There were some lovely lines and potential stitch marks in the views.

What do you think?  This year we have to choose a theme for the Journal Quilt challenge in the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild and I think I am going to choose 'Marks' as that should allow me enough latitude for the year.  I didn't do the challenge last year but I am excited by the 12" x 8" horizontal format this year and 'Marks' will enable me to continue the work I started with Jo Budd, Shelley Rhodes and Dionne Swift.