Finished Quilt!

Quilt. 48 x 60 inches. Hand quilted. Naturally Dyed. Hand stitched binding. 

The fabric was naturally dyed using the following materials: Osage Orange Tree Wood, Rosemary, Cutch, Cochineal, Lac, Blackberries, Avocado Pits and Japanese Maple Leaves. 

I spent every single spare second I had on this project, which is why I was able to finish it so fast. I want to say it took around 30 hours to complete everything (not including the dyeing). 

Finished Quilt!

Quilt. 80 x 74 inches. Hand quilted. Naturally Dyed. Hand stitched binding. 

The fabric was naturally dyed using wood from an Osage Orange Tree and leaves from a Japanese Maple tree in our old backyard.

Oh my gosh, I finally finished my quilt. I am so happy and relieved at the same time. Relieved because I've been working on this for so long, I looked back at my old blog posts and saw that I started this in November of 2014! And I dyed the fabric for it on July 3, 2014! 

The quilt top was made fairly fast, maybe a couple of weeks, but the hand-quilting took the longest time (quilting the three layers together, the quilt sandwich as they say). Also, I did free-form hand quilting (not using a quilting loop and not using any sort of guides), which I thought was going to be more fun, but it probably made it harder in the end. It also didn't help that I took several months off while we moved and I took my sweet time only every once in awhile to work on it. I guess you could say I procrastinated on it quite a bit, the sheer size of it was slightly overwhelming for an amateur, but now I feel pretty good about everything and I sort of wish I got it done a lot sooner. There are things I would have done differently looking at it now, but overall, I am very pleased with it and excited for the next quilting adventure!

Quilting Progress.

 Finished the quilt sandwich! Now I can start hand-quilting the three layers together!

Naturally Dyed Fabric.

 My natural dye color palette: Rosemary, Cochineal + Weld, Blackberries, Madder Root, Cutch, Osage Orange and Indigo.

Natural Dyeing: Part Seven.

Pre–wetting fabrics on left to dip into the iron bath on right. 

Golds immediately turned into olive greens. 

 Osage Orange dye mordanted w/ Tannin + Iron, Tannin + Alum + Iron, Alum, and Tannin + Alum

Step Seven: (Optional) Mordant after-bath of iron to "sadden" or darken the colors. 

Iron turns the golden colors into olive greens!

Natural Dyeing: Part Six.

Step Six: Remove from dye bath. Rinse. Hang to dry!

Natural Dyeing: Part Five.

Dye: Osage Orange Tree Sawdust

Cooking / Stirring

So Pretty!

After cooking for 90 minutes, the dye bath sits over night. 

Following morning: Dye is a lot darker. 

 Dye was boiled a second time for 90 minutes and strained. 

 Fabric is being "Chalked" before going in the dye pot. 

Step Five: Extract dye from plant matter / Dye fabric!