Dyeing to Quilt – How it all began
My first career was as a musician. I had trained at the
Royal Academy of Music in London and then moved to Paris to study for a further
year. One way or another, I got stuck there, and one year turned into ten. I
then moved to Germany, having been persuaded by a very famous German flautist
that there was a lack of good flute teachers there. (There certainly was a demand for being
taught by a famous name – an ‘unknown’ wasn’t quite so popular, but I did
manage to get a post, earn a living and learn German into the bargain!)
One of my treats on my annual holiday home, was to stop off
in London and spend a delightful afternoon browsing in one of the really big
book shops. I can’t remember what book I was looking for on this occasion, but
the book that caught my eye was ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ by Joyce Mori and Cynthia Myerberg. I loved the colours and was absolutely fascinated. But I was neither a dyer nor a quilter, so
there seemed little point in buying it. It went back on the shelf. The next
year and a different book store, and suddenly I found myself with the same book
in my hands. I remember distinctly looking at a colour
gradation showing eight values of the same colour - a delicious blue ... and something in my soul stirred. I
was sorely tempted, but, I persuaded myself, the book, and therefore the dyes
used, were American and would not be available in the UK. ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ was
again returned to its shelf.
Move on another year, another book shop and there again,
staring me in the face, was the same book. This time I decided fate really
wanted me to have this book, and I returned home with ‘Dyeing to Quilt’ in my
bag. My fears over supply were of course unfounded – Procian MX dyes are
readily available in the UK (where I had now returned to live).
One kitchen swathed in protective black bin liners
and I was on my way. I started by dyeing two colour runs. I was thrilled and enchanted
by the jewel like colour of each 8” square steeping in its dye filled plastic
beaker. I was disappointed and perplexed by the greyed apology of a colour that
each square possessed once rinsed. The jeweled effect had certainly departed
down the plug hole with the spent dye.
With the help of my book, I diagnosed the problem as a lack
of urea. My step-father, a retired chemist and inveterate collector of
maybe-could-be-possibly-in-the-future-be-useful stuff appeared with half a sack
of urea that he had 'rescued' from a disbanded lab years previously. It had been
sitting in the garage for years, had gone solid and had (don’t ask me why) got
quite a lot of bits of straw in it – but it
worked. My next dyeing attempt left me with a washing line full of little
squares moving in incremental steps from blue to green. Over the weekend, red
to yellow followed and even some experimental browns and bronzes.
Wonderful! I now possessed a collection of colours squares
of cloth that delighted me – but what was I going to do with them. The obvious answer was to sew them together. I bought
a basic sewing machine. Since I had squares, squares seemed like a good place
to start. Much as I love colour and fabric, I am not a fan of traditional
patchwork and didn’t want to follow a traditional pattern. I decided that I
would chop up and reassemble the squares, making each one different. I had no
plan. I just improvised each square, making it up as I did it. It became obvious to me, that
each one being different was just going to look muddled, so I decided on a few
patterned squares amongst solid colour – rather like bathroom tiles. I didn’t have quite enough to make it as large
as I wanted and at that stage did not have the skill to re-dye matching
colours. So I bought some red and yellow fabric, put a broad band of yellow
around my squares, then made a border of all the meaning bits a pieces, adding
in a sort of log cabin way (although I didn’t know it then) strips of red and a
final yellow to complete.
You will notice that there is no quilting. I didn’t know how
to quilt, so fixed the layers together with buttons. It is quite simple, but I
love this quilt. It has been used as a throw, warming my knees on cold evenings
and gracing the back of the sofa the rest of the time. My cat is very fond of
it too. It really need a clean, but sadly, such was my lack of experience then,
that I didn’t prewash my bought fabric and I am frightened that the colours
will run in my washing machine and shrink. Has anyone any experience of dry
cleaning quilts and if it avoids such catastrophes? The dry-cleaners here will not guarantee.
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