Focus on the color in ice dyed fabric

I was finally able to get started on a mini quilt using my ice dyed fabric. Strangely enough, I’m starting with fabric that was not initially my favorite. I got all my hand-dyes out of the box, stared at them and picked one to work with.

The ice dyed fabric used prayer folds to obtain diagonal as well as horizontal and vertical patterning with black, green and basic blue dye. You can see the shifts in colors caused by dye splitting..

I’m doing improvisational quilts, but using geometrical concepts. There are only three types of regular tessellations, squares, equilateral triangles, and hexagons. These types of tessellations fill the plane with the specific shape occurring in a regular, repeating pattern. Triangles are my favorite - you have the option of joining them to form parallelograms, trapezoids, hexagons… You can cut pieces and have fun arranging your tiling. I make up little stories in my head as I go along. I’ve been missing those clear, cold winter nights and I really want to see the Northern Lights at some point. So this brings us to the final mini quilt.

Here is the pieced quilt top - the flickers in the hand dyed fabrics reach up through the contrasting triangles and diamonds of the grey essex linen.

The lines from the entire fabric appear as rays of light cutting through the diamond shapes.