Hummm........... They wanted us to name our blocks????? How about Oaky Doaky!!! That's pretty corny!
Fall is my favorite time of the year. I can finally shake out the quilts that have been stored for the summer.
Watching the trees change to the beautiful golden yellows and oranges. Whew, does it get any better than that?
Our leaf theme is perfect for the season, and it got me to thinking about a technique I hadn't done in a few years now.
Unlike the fabric dying that I so much enjoy, this technique actually discharges color. You won't believe just how easy it really is. You don't need anything fancy. Just a bottle of liquid dishwasher detergent with bleach in it, a foam brush and a stencil! :-)
Put a little dishwasher soap in a dish to start.
Carefully apply to the fabric making sure your stencil doesn't slip while you working with it. Just a note of caution. Less is best. My tendency was to glob a ton onto my fabric, but that just makes it easier to push under the stencil, which is what you don't want.
Set your fabric out in the sun until the dishwasher soap is dry and then give it a good rinse. There are assorted bleach stop agents on the market. I didn't use any for this little project.
The options are endless when it comes to discharge. You can create some very unique and one of a kind fabrics by playing just a little bit. Experiment with those big foam stamps, or those brass stencils they use for scrap booking. Heck you can ever put it in a bottle with a glue "type" tip on it, and write with your dishwasher detergent. The sky is the limit.
You will find that you will get different results with different fabrics. Here I used 2 different black fabrics. You can tell how different they discharge.
It's not uncommon for a fabric manufacturer to over-dye a fabric with black, if it didn't print, or dye correctly. I've seen some stunning blue's come thru with discharge, but unfortunately haven't found any for myself yet. I do enjoy picking up a variety of black fabrics to play with, and see what I get!
And just in case you were wondering...
Laura Murray Designs is where the stencil I used came from. You might know Laura for all her fabulous work with Paintsticks!
Just as an FYI, I did try Clorox Bleach Pens...
One might have though that this would be perfect, I did anyway...
But to my dismay this is all I got. It seemed to dry on top of the fabric, and when I rinsed it, there was no trace of anything on the fabric. It seemed to have just washed away???? I guess that is a good thing for our clothes now isn't it. As along as it takes out the stain! :-)
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Now for the border around the blocks. I am a "Pinterest" fanatic. I just love finding things and storing them with a photo. A few weeks back I found a tutorial on making a scrappy border. You can click
HERE to see it for yourself. It's called the Boston Block from Bits N Pieces Workshop.com
I loved it, but knew that I wanted to keep my border colors consistent through out my quilt. I am going to share with you how I did it for this project.
I started with 2, 2 1/2" strips pieced together and pressed open.
Sub-cut that into 2 1/4" pieces
I made my triangle template by using painters tape and my ruler.
Now we are going to take another 2 1/2" strip and stitch down all our triangles.
Just keep adding them as you sew.
Once your done with that side, you can add in additional triangles on the opposite side. There is almost no waste that way! :-)
Cut them apart...
Press open, and this is what you have!
You can see from the block how it goes together from here!
I had so many of these little leaves, that I put together a table runner, and made a few of these fun, free standing (or hanging) leaves, like the ones on my block. They will make for some fun package wrappings!
A big thanks to Madame Samm, and to Cherry for stepping up and keeping us all in line! We couldn't do it without either of you wonderful girls!
Now you all know how much I love give-a-ways!
I have a lovely layer cake from Connecting Threads.
24 delicious tonal colors!
Yummm, just think of the things you can do with em.
So be a follower, leave me a message and tell me what you would like to do with this layer cake. I will pick one winner on
Friday Oct 12th.
Can't wait to hear from you!
Here is the list of todays bloggers!
Happy Hoppin!
Just in case you missed it, I posted a fun litle leaf project last Monday...
:-)
Bonnie 58
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