A new quilt sample is off my frame and going back to Debbie. We will give her a minute to get the binding on and then hang it up in the store. It is from Terry Atkinson's book Graphic Mixx and is called Corn Rows. We have some kits of this great pink/brown/green fabric combo all ready for you!
A lot of progress was made on our Pie In The Sky quilts during class. Just wanted to share this one which by Janine--
She was thinking outside of the box to make this out of brights instead of the MN fabrics. We also had one person working with blue and green batik fabrics, making for another good assortment of possibilities. What fabric would you use?
When we are opening newly delivered boxes of fabric, we love to open the flaps and see what's inside. I especially like the bolts of batiks with their fantastic colors and designs. The special thing about batiks is that you really have to unfold some of the yardage to get a full sense of what it looks like. There can sometimes be some frustration with the fact that what you see on the first fold might not look exactly like what you see on the 4th or 5th or 11th fold. That is due to the nature of the process of making a batik fabric. And once you watch this video you will understand why.
It is about 17 minutes long, so be patient with the loading. It's worth it. A single cut of yardage is followed throughout the many steps it takes to be shipped to the fabric company, in this case, Moda.
A few things that crossed my mind as I watched:
From now on I will always prewash batiks and use Retayne to set the dyes.
I will never complain about my working conditions.
I will fully appreciate the fact that I am not exposed to serious chemicals every day.
No matter how much I end up paying for a yard of batik, I would gladly pay at least twice that amount IF it would go straight to these workers.
Just FYI, there is no spoken English in this video, so if the traditional music becomes less desirable after a few minutes, just silence it and watch for the occasional subtitles in English.
