Thursday, May 20, 2010

Long Tall quilt is DONE!

I put the last stitches in my Long Tall quilt last night while watching The Good Wife.  Is that a great show or what?  DH and I both love it.

But I digress.  My quilt was made from this pattern.  It was a monthly strip club offering at a local shop.  Rather than use the jelly roll they offered, I used turquoise and purple batik strips from my 2 1/2 inch batik strip bin.  The background is a Hoffman 1895 batik - color Hyacinth and the border is Hoffman 1895 Agate.



Here's the back:



Check these out.  These are the two color catchers that I threw in just for extra insurance when I washed the quilt this afternoon.  Every fabric in this quilt was prewashed with Retaine and I washed the finished quilt in cold water with a cold rinse.  And I still got this:



I can't imagine what they would have looked like if I hadn't prewashed.  YIKES.  I know batiks have excess dye, but you would think that after prewashing, as well as rinsing, nothing should be left.  The interesting thing is that I always check the water when I prewash to make sure that it's clear before I dry and use the fabrics so I thought I was safe.  As long as I use Retaine, it always seems to be clear, so I'm not sure where all of the extra purple came from during this wash cycle.  Oh well.  Thank goodness for the color catchers.

On an unrelated note, do you see anything wrong with this picture?



One of Sassy's other new tricks is to jump onto the top of that big pot next to the baker's rack.  She does it so quietly that we don't know she's there until she starts messing with the sticks that are in the pot.  She's already broken one.  Sigh.  That pot is about 4 feet high and at least 10 years old and we've never had to worry about it until now.

But, she gets away with pretty much everything because many other times she looks like this and is so cute and entertaining.



I thought this little scene was interesting as well.  Echo apparently decided to do one of his snuggle fests with Sassy and ended up laying right on top of her.  What you can see from top to bottom is Echo's head, one of Echo's front legs, then one of Sassy's back legs, Echo's other front leg, Sassy's other back leg, Sassy's tail, and then finally one of Echo's back legs.  I thought it was pretty funny how they alternated.  While they were laying there, Echo was very nicely washing Sassy's feet and tail for her.  I did check to ensure she was breathing since he does weigh more than double what she does.


5 comments:

Kim Brackett said...

I love your Long Tall quilt! Very nice colors.

Echo looks like a handful. Cute picture of both of them sleeping.

Terry said...

Your quilt is beautiful! And I agree...thank goodness for color catchers!!

Leah Spencer said...

Could it be the thread you used that bled onto the color catchers? Can't really prewash thread. :)

Loris said...

Uh oh! I didn't realize batiks bled that much...I thought they had been boiled alot in the process of making them. I have only sewn one quilt with them...can't remember that I prewashed like I usually do (eek, it was a gift!) But thanks for the heads up.
Your long and tall quilt is beautiful! so are Sassy and Echo. Cats seem to like everything the same and a variety all at the same time.

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

I use color catchers when I wash batiks but the dye coming out of 90% of them is dead dye that won't transfer to another fabric unless you leave them piled up wet for awhile. Dead dye does collect on the sheets but also just washes out with the water. Very few batiks have bleeding problems because they are washed in the manufacturing process. You know how many batiks I use and I've never had one run in a quilt.