It's done

Remember that little teaser back in June? The photo with the soda cans? Well here is the finished product. My attempt at the art quilting world again. It's always scary I know, but I just can't seem to get enough of this world.

In February I was reading a sewing magazine with an article on using aluminum cans. Really in a sewing magazine, I'm thinking???? Are they nuts? It was more on the garment line of magazine, and I had horrible visions of a tin can dress. Not quite so much, I am glad to say, but still very interesting, I thought.

You cut the top and bottoms off the cans then cut them apart so they lay nice and flat. Fire up the BARBIE, (yeah I know, not that Barbie) :-) Then cook away!
Now really, who has enough time on their hands to come up with this???? Or was it done under the influence???? Beer cans work as well as soda cans do!!!! Reguardless, it is really quite interesting and just how much more "GREEN" can one get, right?



I found thru trial and error that it works the best if the printed side of the can is towards the fire, and you do need to get it right down there in the flames. A little heat will take you almost forever to get the thing to start to turn. You need a good pair of tongs to hang onto things with. My BBQ tongs with the nice long handles would have been great but they didn't hold the can well enough. The short ones were perfect but you have to deal with hot fingers from time to time.



The heat makes it turn a bronze looking shade with some neat rainbow things that appear from no where. Just a touch too much heat and your can starts to melt. It will turn a bright shiny silver color, and from there, it's over. No going back from that point. I did find though that a combination of all of it made into a quite interesting wall hanging. This piece of hand dyed fabric said solar system to me. Yeah, I know, now I am hearing my fabrics talk. But really it wasn't me that was inebriated while I was cooking my cans. They were all soda cans!!! Really they were.

Go ahead and do your part in this recycling world. Give it a try. I am seeing a woodsy theme in my head with bears and moose in the trees. I have them cut out of the cans already, and am just waiting for the inspiration to hit, to get it started.

I hope you get inspired to look at something in a very different way this week! And have fun with it!!!

Dyeing time again

A sure sign of summer, time to break out those fabric dyes. I am 3 years into this madness, and I can hardly wait for the summer sun to show, so I can get all my supplies out and start playing again. It took me 2 years to actually cut into my treasures. They were so pretty to look at. The perfect eye candy, but I made the leap last summer and, WOW, I sure do like how they work into projects.

I've been searching thru my treasure trove of patterns that I have downloaded from online, and found one that I decided I just had to dye fabrics to make. I needed 4 fabrics of each color group ranging from dark to light. The perfect dye challenge.

For this I used the same bucket for all 4 fabrics. I just added another layer of fabric and soda ash every 10 minutes. What I ended up with was 4 shades of the same color. Some had better results than others. I am thinking it is because some were purely 1 color of dye mix. The raspberry was rather surprising. The bottom layer was very dark and almost purple looking, and the very top layer was a light blue. A perfect example the different colors in that dye mix.

The colors I used for these fabrics as as follows top to bottom.
#18 dark purple
#46 brilliant blue
#6 deep orange
#4 deep yellow
#29 bright green
#65 raspberry

Dharma Trading is my favorite place to order thru. I am awaiting a delivery of some new colors this week.

Here is a little teaser for you. Just what do you think I am doing with this??

Stay tuned, I think you will be a little surprised!