Inspired by a Book On Convergence Quilts

Once again, when we think winter is over, it hits us with another icy storm. It's a bit treacherous outside so I decided not to go for my Neighbourhood walk. Instead I'll spend the extra time in my studio and it's a great day to experiment.

I picked up a book at the library on Convergence Quilts. I had never heard of them before and they looked really interesting. From the book, the definition of a Convergence Quilt is a quilt which features two or more designs that are cut into strips and then merged together by mixing up the strips. Many of the designs in the book are made from hand dyed fabrics.

I really like dying fabric so I thought I would experiment with that today. I bought 2m of cream coloured 100% cotton fabric. Dyes take much better on 100% natural fibers. I decided I wanted to use spring colours so I got out my yellow and blue Createx Permanent Liquid Dyes.

I first hand wash the fabric in the sink with Synthrapol which is a special soap that removes the sizing that is put in fabric and any other impurities so that the dye will take better. Then I dry it in the dryer.
Once the fabric is ready for dying, I fill a bucket with uniodized salt and water and soak the fabric in that squeezing out the excess water when it is completely wet. The uniodized salt also helps the quality of the dye.

Then I arrange the fabric in a single layer in another large bucket or rubbermaid container scrunching it a bit to get interesting patterns in the dye.

Then because the dye is concentrated, I have to dilute it and I mix soda ash in with the diluting water. Once that is done, I start pouring the dye over the fabric lying in the container. I wanted to have yellow, and green so because I didn't have a prepared green, I had to mix the blue and the yellow.

It is exciting because you really do not know how the fabric will look until it's done. I let it sit in the container for one and a half hours and then rinsed out the leftover dye. I could then see how it turned out and was surprised that it was lighter than I expected.
So now I had to dye the second piece. Knowing how the first piece of fabric turned out helped me make a decision about the colours of the second piece. I decided to make one end a bright or darker yellow and the other end a darker green so that when I converged the two pieces of fabric for the quilt it would look interesting and not boring.

After rinsing both pieces, I machine washed them again with Synthrapol to remove any loose dye in the fibers and then dried them in the dryer which will heat set the dyes.

These are the two pieces. I got a little more blue in the bottom piece than expected but it could work as an interesting convergence quilt.

The experiment was not without its little accidents. As I lifted the container to take the dyed cloth to the sink to rinse, I knocked over a full cup of blue dye all over my counter. I had to stop to mop it up and as a result I now have a blue counter cloth instead of a white one. I was actually smart and wore gloves for the process so at least my hands are the regular colour.

When I have the convergence quilt done, I'll post a picture of it so you can see what it looks like.