Dying or Dyeing? . . .

Bright and early on Saturday morning, I loaded up the car and headed off to learn something new. Once you get to be a certain age, you know it's going to be a good day if you can allow yourself to even think you're going to learn something new!

Including the instructor, there were nine of use "dye" hard quilters out in Janice's wonderful outdoor kitchen/living area (should have got a picture of that - it was really neat). All of us were dressed in our most fashionably ugly clothes and raring to go.

Karen, our instructor, has been doing this for quite some time and has a wonderful collection of powder dyes and all the other necessary ingredients. Lucky for us we did not have to buy anything other than the fabric that she gets for a really good price from somewhere down in the States. We all included an extra $10 to pay for the supplies we used and then paid for however many yards of fabric that we dyed.

What a huge color selection to choose from -I think my color palette is pretty basic - but still beautiful! Have a look at some of the process . . .

Now that I have all these beautiful colors, what am I going to make? Look at those scrumptious yellows and the robin's egg blue and the greens! It's going to be hard to decide - I'm thinking something with a crisp white background and then using these fabrics for the applique - nothing down on paper yet - but, oh, just think of the possibilities.

I would most definitely do this again - I'd like to try some pastel colors - if you get the chance give this a whirl - lots of fun!

Remember I mentioned my brother was coming up to visit his school buddy - well he did. He stopped in to visit him in the hospital on Saturday afternoon but Kevin was sleeping so Dean (my brother) stayed for an hour or so and had to leave. The nurses suggested that around 2 p.m. on the Sunday would be a good time to maybe catch Kevin awake (between painkillers). Dean stayed with us on Saturday night and when he went to leave he checked his phone messages and had received one saying that Kevin had passed away during the night. It was heartbreaking - Dean was unable to have that final visit. I can only hope that Kevin somehow knew he was there - Dean had talked to him on the Wednesday, so Kevin knew he was coming - the pain killers just kept them from saying goodbye. Kevin was in his early 40's. We all need to take a look at how short life can really be - take a look around and appreciate what you have.