Suzi Soderlund, Fiber Artist

Cerulean Blue in the Freestyle Design is my most recent Featured Fabric.  It is not often that I say I have a favorite color.  I love strong, bold, vibrant colors and they change often.  What ever is my current color of choise reflects my mood, my state of mind and the place Iam in my life.  Cerulean Blue had taken my world by storm, so far two tank tops, a jacket, hand dyed fabric and now hand marbled fabric.  I love it and the best way to describe it is “that it makes me HAPPY”.   I just received an order to dye two yards of the the Damask Rose Jacquard PFD Cerulean Blue, so maybe it’s not just me.

It is always so much fun to experiment, play with and create new colors.  This is Light Blue & Green in the Switchback design.  Here in the Pacific Northwest we are having a rather damp, cool summer so far.  I was once told that summer doesn’t really start until the 5th of July, I do hope it is on the way.  This Light Blue & Green is what I see out my window.  a hint of blue sky with fresh green of the trees and grass.  I love walking in the wood after a rain.

Pelican has a story to tell.  On occasion I do have special requests from some of you.  You are looking for that perfect color to go with…  Susan had chosen a variety of hand marbled fabrics in the Chocolate Brown color and a variety of designs.  She will be making Pelicans and needed a color for under the Pelicans wings.  We talked and looked at photos.  I experimented with the hand dyed background and then the hand marbled colors.  This is the final results and I have been making and selling Pelican ever since.

Melon in the Freestyle Design is out new featured fabric.  Why Melon?  I had this melon colored patina fabric that inspired me.  I marbled on it in light minty greens, yellow and white.  It came out light, fresh and fun.   It may be that we have had some rather gray, wet weather and I have been dreaming of summer.  Or because I enjoy all of the melons when they are in season.  Either way it is a new color for me.  Enjoy!

Normally I have a featured fabric for a while longer, but you purchased the last on so fast I had to come up with a new one.  Our current Featured Fabric is Little Monsters in the Waved Icarus Design.  Little Monsters has a bit of a saga to go with it.  I had this bolt of fabric that was a solid Light Pale Turquoise.  It wasn’t working for what I had purchased it for; I couldn’t seam to be able to give it away.  So one day I dumped some extra Yellow dye on it see what would happen.  This amazing Lime Green appeared.  I marbled it and it sold like hot cakes, out the door in no time at all.  Then I had to figure out the correct dye combination for the Lime Green.  It took a few tries, but now their back.  Why Little Monsters you ask?  Think of kids’ fabric, if it has monsters, what color are they?

My current Featured Fabric is Red/Red Hand Marbled in the Dragon Wing Design.  It is the first piece of fabric I scanned with my new scanner.  Yippee!  It worked.  The old one up and died, so we hauled it off to the recycle store to see if they could salvage some parts off of it.  But back to the story behind the fabric name.  Red/Red because I think of Firetrucks and old Barns.

My sister had to beg me to create some hand marbled fabric in any shade of Red.  When we were kid as she is the older sister she always got to pick out clothes she liked and then I would wear then when she out grew them.  And she Loves Red, always has and always will.   So it seamed the only color of clothes I wore was Red, I guess you could say it made me see Red.  So I fixed that and out grew her by at lease 5 inches.  And I am happy to say that now that I am not forced to wear Red I quite like it.

Here it is,  my newest Hand Marbled Color Creation.  It’s so new I  just gave it it’s final wash, dry and iron earlier today.  So new I’m not even sure what to call it.  The funny thing about naming colors is sometimes the name pops into my head.  Other times I’m just not sure where to go.  Why do I give them names?  When I’m at quilt shows many times someone will say “If I contact you and what you to send me one of these, what do I ask for?”  Then I can tell them the color name and the marbling design, so I will get it right.

You may remember Rainbow from an earler post.  I marbled using the colors of the rainbow.  This fabric just makes my world happy.  I took a few pieces to my Quilt Group gathering, for show & tell and they bought all I had.  That Reaction I will take as a positive sign.  I never intend for my quilt group to be a market place,  but they sure a great Test Group, so suportive, encouraging and creative.

Our Newest Featured Fabric is Storm Blue in the River Rocks Design.  I always thing of this color as storm are brewing and rolling across the valley.  Clouds are dark and mysterious, but always changing and moving.

One of the things that I enjoy most about hand marbling fabric is creating the color combinations.  Autumn or Wild Copper starts with the same hand dyed Copper that you will find on my web site.  But rather than marbling on it in the muted colors that you will see in my hand marbled Copper, I have added contrast.  Orange, Yellow, Red, Turquoise, Green and Black to make it pop.  Why call it Autumn?  When I look out my back door that is the color of allthe the ferns, foliage and leaves.