easy peasy

wanting to do some quick and easy natural dyeing, i decided to try a technique using extracts from the extract dyeing book, "colours of the rainbow" by helen melvin. the process is quite fun! i had purchased some silk hankies when in asheville, and decided to dye them along with some wool, linen, alpaca, and cotton.

the two colors i used were osage orange and teal (from hue & dye). i presoaked the fiber in a copper mordant to bring out more greens in the colors. i was rather surprised by which fibers picked up which color more; the wool grabbed the most blue, the silk grabbed the most yellow, and the cellulose fibers tended to the paler tones. i was especially pleased by the alpaca.

i pried apart the silk hankies for spinning later (august when i take a silk spinning class), wound the yarns onto bobbins, and twisted the silk organza to get some pleats when it dries.

another experiment i have going is a traditional indigo vat which has been brewing for awhile now. this shibori example is from a piece of duckcloth i want to make into an oilcloth apron; i'm just waiting for some of the smell to air out of it. when i say traditional, what i mean to say is urine and indigo. but i must say, the vat itself smells less odiferous now than it did when i first started it.

in preparation

little bundles i hope to dip into an indigo vat. shibori is something i haven't played around with very much, but i'm excited to see how these pieces come out. i'm using some of the mistletoe dyed scraps and hope the indigo covers up an unsuccessful dye result. i'm thinking the madder dyed pieces will become a deeper blue purple with one dip or so, but i'm not completely certain. that's the fun of experimenting with natural dyes, you really don't know how a fiber will come out of the pot; bright, pale, muddy, strong, mellow, uneven, uninspiring, surprising.

my big picture plan with this indigo dyeing is to create an oilcloth apron i can wear when dyeing in the future. i've wrapped screws into one piece of duck cloth, and scrunched up another. when they've been dyed and dried, i'll stretch them onto a frame and layer linseed oil until a slick surface is created. when all is cured, the pieces will be cut and joined into a long styled apron. i'll post pictures of the stages and we'll see how the final sums up.

i need to get out more

i've been wrapped up in my quilting (timewise and literally) for several days now, and find myself sad to leave it to do other things. one of those things was attending the scad fibers open house on friday, and forgetting to bring a camera. however, i saw some really amazing work, grabbed some business cards, and made an indigo dyed bit of shibori fabric to remember it by.

in quilting news, the triangles and squares have been machine stitched together (otherwise i would still be hand sewing the top still) and i have the top, batting, and back done and basted together. one of the goals of doing this quilt is to hand sew it together. thanks to my lovely new thimble and a bandaid, my hands are pain free, and one of the things i can rest assured about is that after having the quilt in my lap for some time it is definitely warm and cosy.

today was a sunny, breezy kind of day, and with trees budding i thought about picnics in the grass and soaking up the daylight while lying on my quilt. a pin popped that idea, as i was reminded about grass stains (thanks mom!). but still, the idea is a good one, but perhaps an old blanket would be okay too.

still going strong

the solar dyed avocado took up about the same amount of dye as heating it on the stove in the second bath, so that's interesting. there seams to be a significant amount of dyestuff in the avocado, so it's a good thing that i've been saving up the skins.

the shibori experiment went well, i'm really enjoying the calla lily-like patterning of the second piece (some bead work to enhance it would be pretty, or possibly some metallic thread embroidery). i will set these pieces aside and work on them more later.

tougher than it looks

i've been seeing posts about solar dyeing, and thought i would give it a try; as it's still in the 90's here and the thought of turning on the stove and standing over it for an hour is rather unbearable. using the leftover dyestuff from past dye projects, red onion skin and avocado skin, i pleated and wrapped some of my prepared alum mordanted cloth bits and let them soak outside in the sun for two days. the avocado is still soaking, so no results to post of yet.

i was happy with the results of the cotton swatch soaked in onion skin; finally some patterning to my dye efforts! as i've been going through my selvedge magazines i've been reading a lot about resist dyeing, i think that that along with shibori will be my next area of study. the linen piece was okay, some dye penetrated the edges but the inside of the pleat was still white. pretty, but not as interesting as the cotton.

i've been admiring the progress eva of tinctory has been making with her smocking pieces, and have to say that i was impressed and enchanted with her work last year, but am really enthralled by her current natural dye artworks. one day i shall own one of her lovely pieces for my own.

i had tried my hand at smocking in the past and every attempt was quite sad, so pulling out the art of manipulating fabric, i tried once more using the dyed linen swatch. after several eh stitched attempts, i ripped them out, and tried to simplify my approach. two rows in and i thought of what could fit in the niches to make it more interesting, and to aid in holding them open. looking through my bead collection, at first i tried seed beads (too small), then swarvoski crystals (too saturated in color), and finally my pearls (they popped right in and added a delicate glow to the soft coloring of the dye). as i sewed, the piece started to take shape and i pictured a 3-dimensional brooch; so when i was done, i sewed it to a bit of felt and a pin. at the finish of this project, i have to say hats off to tinctory, as this was a more difficult skill than i had previously thought, and requires a good deal of thought beforehand. i'm not sure if i shall make further attempts, but a skill learned is never lost.