Vicki over at Sew Inspired has put together a whole month of folks blogging about their take on free motion quilting. I’m over there today talking about how my free motion quilting morphed into free motion machine sketching. Come take a look!

It is with great joy that I announce the launch of Dyeing 101: Controlling Color, my very first e-course! I have spent the last few years connecting with people online, all while growing my little business, honing my craft, and making art. It now seems an obvious extension, to combine all these loves and develop an e-course, but I do believe that I needed every step along the way of my journey to make this happen.

This self-paced online course is designed to teach you how to use Procion MX Fiber Reactive Dyes on cotton in a controlled manner. Whether you are a beginner, or someone who has dyed in this manner before, my intention is to help you gain confidence in color mixing on cloth and raise you from apprentice to “journey(wo)man” status. I will lead you through creating a series of color palettes and then teach you how to use those to reproducibly dye small or large amounts of particular hue.

Specifically, you will learn how to create the “Candiotic Table of Elemental Color” using just over 2 yards of fabric for the swatches and small amounts of 6 different primary hues of dye. After creating this awesome reference palette, you will learn how to use this 66-step gradation of color mixing to dye larger pieces of your favorite hues, create color wheels, then shades, tints, and tones of these hues.

This page tells you all about the course, and has an “add to cart” button to purchase if you’d like to join us. I wanted to share my early bird coupon with my awesome loyal blog readers: type “WORM!” (because you’re an “early bird”, get it??) while you’re checking out and you’ll be able to purchase the class for 30% off, or $69 instead of the regular $99.

I intended to start the course February 1, but I’ve already finished the introduction and first session, so it’s live as of yesterday! I plan to release a lesson every week until all 8 sessions are up, and they will remain there for your access until you have the time. This is a self-paced course with no expiration date, so you can fit the dyeing in when it’s convenient for you!

What does have an expiration date is the coupon code…it’s only good until February 1^st. So if you’re thinking about taking the class, I urge you to consider enrolling now so you can save 30%.

I opened registration up yesterday and have already enrolled several people in the class. I am beside myself with excitement! I know that this would not be happening if not for the incredible support that I get from you – yes YOU! – coming by and reading my blog. Even if you don’t comment, I know that you’ve been here, and knowing that people find my art and my process worthy of a few minutes of their time is truly awesome support. Thank you!!!!

Are you familiar with Radiance? It’s a fabric that is 50% silk and 50% cotton, and Kaufman now makes a PFD version of it. I’ve got a customer who wants some bright silky fabric, but was worried that working with 100% silk would be too difficult, as she’s working with some very small pieces. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try out Radiance!

So I dyed some Radiance side by side with my regular PFD dyer’s cloth, just a quick trip around the color wheel to see how and if the hues shift on the Radiance.

After washing and drying, here’s what happened:

Very pretty! Just as vibrant as my cotton, with a lovely sheen! When you line them up side by side, you can see that the radiance shifts away from the turquoise a bit:

Where you see this is in the purple – it’s a bit redder, and the green – it’s a bit yellower.

One thing I didn’t expect about the radiance is that it has two different sides – a silky side and a cottony side. The silky side of the radiance has a lot less visual texture than the cotton, even though it was squished into a container with the same amount of pressure that I used with the cotton. Flip it over and you can still see a fair amount of visual texture on the back of the radiance:

Tomorrow I’ll show you what I ended up dyeing for my client! I really can’t wait to use some of this for myself!

Well, I had such a fun day on Sunday! I gave a private dyeing lesson to Laine, a quilter who’s done some indigo dyeing before, and her friend Nina who is new to the world of fabric in general, and had never given any thought to fabric dyeing before. They arrived at my house Sunday morning, and they wanted to dye some silk scarves for themselves. I had them look at examples of my scarves; Laine fell in love with the black orchid and kelp color palettes, while Nina really like aspects of both moonlit moth and black orchid and so we decided to combine them!

I also had Laine dye some cotton fabric with the same colors so that she could see the similarities and differences with dyeing silk and cotton:

We had some lunch, and then I had them create color wheels while the fabric was batching, and then we washed the fabric out. Their glee was such a reward! They were so excited with what that had created – ah, the magic of dyeing!

I’m fast and furiously finishing things for my show that starts Friday night and runs all weekend! Here are 6 new convertible clutches:

I’ve got more things finished too…no time yet to process the pix – I’ve got labels and signs to make!

P.S. Today (Thursday) is the last day for my DVD pre-order special…thank you SO MUCH for your support!