I mentioned in my last post that I’d been dyeing cellulose fibres recently. I’ve mostly stuck to staple fibres like the viscose I showed last week, and bamboo. These are the greens, blues, purples, silver and black shades of bamboo I did:
And here are the yellows, browns and reds bamboo staple:
I tried a couple of shades of Rose fibre top (the photos of these were blurred) and they turned out well so I did some bamboo tops:
They came out really nice, so I used up the last of the blue and purple dyes on some viscose top:
And since I’d already made a mess in the kitchen and still had the table out, I started dyeing with acid dyes. Only these silk carrier rods were dry enough to photograph:
This week I made more cup cozies. I made 2 sets of flat ones that will have buttons. I started out with a rectangle. I decorated them in a random way. I then cut them into 4 at the prefelt stage. The purple has some orange blobs of orange throwers waist. It should show up again when they are dry. The green has some of my hand spun single yarn. It is quite stable until you wet it then it get its twist back and goes all crazy.
I finish them on a glass wash board. It is very fast.
These are the rest of the ones I made. They will get buttons. Some will fit a coffee mug and some will fit travel mugs or water bottles.
Here are some of my buttons I will be picking through for these. I have many more if I need them. I will use a thin round black elastic loop to close them. That way I think people may be able to adjust them by looping them once or twice as needed.
I also made some that are like the cardboard sleeves you get at take out places.
The multicoloured one was made using a batt and prefelt triangles I cut out of some scraps. The black one is regular merino top with a white silk hanky stretched over it. The white one is made with prefelt and a black silk hanky stretched around it. The white one shrank much more top to bottom then the other two. I didn’t look carefully at the piece I had before using it. Prefelt is directional. If I had looked I would have used it in the other direction.
I use the washboard to finish them as well.
This is the group drying. I really like the way the back and white ones look like marble.
If you made it this far here are two unrelated pictures. One is my grandson helping me with my ice cream cone at the farmers market on Sunday.
And the turkeys I showed you a few weeks ago. The first one is when they are 1 week old. They are now 4 .5 weeks old. They grow very fast. They will be moving to new quarters this week.
As many of you my know already, I helped to organize a class with Gail Harker here in Montana. It was the Level 1 Experimental Hand Stitch course and it was held the last week in June. I was Gail’s assistant and we had 7 wonderful students.
There was lots of lovely color to play with.
Threads were dyed.
And fabrics were “painted”.
Lovely color was seen throughout the class.
Gail demonstrated many different techniques and stitches.
The first part of the class was held at Camas Creek Cottage. Micki has a wonderful selection of hand stitch threads so if you’re in the area, don’t miss her shop.
Stitches were learned.
And we even stitched on paper.
It was a great class and the students really seemed to enjoy themselves. You can see more photos on Gail’s blog. Thank you Gail for the wonderful class. We expect to see you back next year 🙂
In keeping with our color theme for the year, this third quarter challenge is related to dyeing and blending from a picture using a color generator, then use the colors in a project.
We’ve had a very wet, cool spring so I chose a picture of a sunset at a Poipu beach on the island of Kauai where it was perfect summer weather. Thinking Spring/Summer!
I decided to dye some Icelandic roving with the three primary yellow oranges in the Adobe picture. The colors at each end and in the middle. Let the mixing begin!
Using a printout of the Adobe pic, I used my acid dyes which were already prepared and mixed each color using what I thought would come closest. It’s really hard to tell from the color of the mix so I used coffee filters to write my formula and drop a sample at each stage. It still wasn’t showing a huge difference. I had already prepared the fiber, soaking it in vinegar water so I was ready to dye and hoped it worked.
I started with the middle color which the generator marked as base, then the color on the right, then the left.
Since I only have an induction stovetop in my work area, I wanted to do all the dyeing at once. So, I used zip bags and steamed them together in a large pot.
After steaming them for 30 minutes, I left the bags overnight to cool. The next morning I opened each one and was surprised that the roving was mottled.
Once the roving was rinsed and dried, I ran each through the drum carder.
The blended batts weren’t exactly the colors I had wanted, so I took it once step further and started blending the batts with more roving to try to get the colors I needed.
Much better.
You can see the blended colors were closer to the samples I had made with the dye. Go figure. I guess the white filter paper may have lightened them up.
Here is the progression:
Number 1 (in the center) the formula was one tablespoon each red and orange, one drop blue and 2 drops black in one cup water.
Number 2 (on the right) –3 tablespoons red, 1 yellow, 1 drop black and 15 drops blue.
Number 3 (on the left) 3 tablespoons yellow, 1 red.
When I carded them I added white , black or blue to lighten or darken or mute the color. I just adding until I thought the color was close enough. There is no contest here, just satisfy yourself the color is close enough.
I really liked the purple and gray in the PaletteX picture. I had some merino close to the colors so I carded the purple with white to lighten and black to darken and yellow to mute. Then I had some steel gray merino that matched the gray.
Now, what to make? After a lot of thought, I decided to make an Ipad cover. I didn’t want to replicate the picture just use these colors to to give the impression of a sunset.
I made the resist using a 30% shrinkage rate, then covered the resist with hand dyed silk habatoi added a later of gold merino I had dyed a couple of weeks ago. The next layer was white Corriedale.
The final layer was the design using the colors I had just dyed and carded.
FrontBackInside
The inside ruched nicely and even mirrored the design on the outside.
Then in went the Ipad.
It is slightly larger than the Ipad. When I calculated the shrinkage, I based it on Merino shrinkage not Icelandic. But its okay since I can put in a pen and stylus.
So, for the challenge you can pick a picture and decide which colors you’d like to use, then dye/and or blend roving to get your colors. There is no set number. I just got carried away. Then use them in a project of your choice – wet felting, needle felting, spinning, etc. Whatever, you’re comfortable doing.
This was challenging for me, but I learned about color mixing and blending and just what the eye sees. Of course, the printed version and screen version may also be different. Just have fun with it!
I look forward to seeing your challenge pieces on the forum.
I laid this wall hanging out about a week or so before I got time to felt it, and I think it ended up being ‘upside down’. I wrote down the wools and fibres I used as I laid it out, but I think I forgot a few! Also, I added a few locks to the bottom just before I felted it, but I’m certain that was originally the top:
I added some pieces of hand-spun yarn I’d made mostly from bits left over from carding, I spun them quite thickly, and didn’t do anything with them after wards, just wound them onto card. This one is on the row of white Chubut, a ‘new’ to me wool I got from wollknoll, which felts so nicely and looks really nice too.
These are some cotton fibres: cotton top, cotton fibre and cotton nepps on carded Portuguese Merino, with some soy staple and carded Gotland.
I’ve been dyeing some cellulose fibres recently too for taking to the Makefest at the Science and Industry Museum. I’m getting the hang of it now, but I don’t think my first lot of fibres turned out as nice as I’d like. I did some Viscose fibre recently, and this turned out really nice. These are some of the reds, oranges and yellows:
And some yellows, greens, blues and purples:
I don’t like the way dyeing cellulose fibres wastes so much water with the rinsing, but it is easier for me to do large amounts than it is with acid dyes, not that I had much choice, even mixing up just 500ml each of red, yellow, blue and black was more than enough to dye about 200g of fibre and I had to look for other things to dye so as not to waste it 🙂 I tried dyeing Kapok fibre too, that stuff is practically impossible to wet, it seems to form a ‘skin’ around itself, so dyeing gave some interesting results as it behaved the same way, and when the fibre was separated, the centre wasn’t dyed. This is some rose and lilac coloured kapok:
I had a fairly productive week I made 4 cup cozies. They need their buttons and elastic loops but I should get that done this week. I need to sort out if they are narrow enough to go through the handle on a coffee mug. If they don’t fit I will make them for travel mugs without handles.
Here are some close up pictures. The top two have throwsters silk waste. The bottom left is a silk scarf and the right is cotton cheesecloth.
I also got the inklette loom warped to make a strap.
The weaving is not great but it is getting better as I go.
Lastly I had t very nice ladies to may studio to learn to make nuno felt scarves. As usual I was busy with the students and forgot to take pictures until the end.
I made a couple of pairs of slippers about a year ago using the shape of slippers that Nada showed in this tutorial. One pair for me and one pair for hubby. My pair are still doing fine. Slightly worn on the bottom but they don’t look like this:
This is what is left of Hubby’s pair. Sad, isn’t it? I had used spray on Plasti-Dip to coat the bottom but he wore that off in no time. So he needed a new pair. And I decided to buy some leather soles for them this time.
He chose green for his slippers. I used the lighter green for the inner layers and the batts for the outer layers. The white is cheese cloth that I add in the middle layers for strength and the lower right blob of fabric is dyed cheese cloth to put on the outside.
Here are the resists partially covered with the lighter green wool.
And then I added the cheese cloth after two layers of light green.
I just cut a rectangle and then fold the edges over.
And I put it on both sides of the inner two layers of wool.
Then I added the darker green wool. I did a total of 6 layers with the last layer on the sole made extra thick.
And then I added the dyed cheese cloth over the toes. This resist is easy to use because you can really tell which side is up or down and which is the right and left one. I then felted, fulled and shaped the slippers.
Then I ordered the leather slipper soles. These are Somerset Designs. The first pair I ordered were too small. He wears size 11 so I thought 11″ would work. So I had to order another pair in the largest size which is 12″. Luckily, the 11″ pair fit my slippers and now I’m sure my pair will last a really long time. Hubby was unhappy that his slippers had to wait and I had new soles on mine first.
Here’s what the inside looks like. I’m sure this part is supposed to be against your foot but it really makes these slippers really cushy!
These already have holes punched for stitching to the slipper.
I used small safety pins to hold the sole in place while I was stitching. I then used a tapestry needle (blunt end) and #5 perle cotton in brown to attach the soles.
And here is the result. I think the soles will really last much longer and hopefully, I won’t be making another pair next year but these will last several years instead.
And he had to put them on immediately. He’s very pleased. So if you have considered using the leather slipper soles, give them a try. They are easy to attach. Just remember to get them a bit bigger than you think you need.
I don’t know if its spring or summer or something in the creative cosmic atmosphere, but it seems fish have become a theme for art lately.
Cathy (Luvswool) and I got together before she went to her Colorado residency and I went to Florida a few weeks back. We wanted to do something different together. We remembered the cool fish Galina ( Felicity) did a while back on her blog and decided to try that. (Thanks for the inspiration Galina!)
We each made our resists beforehand. Of course, we were busy chatting while deciding on colors. It took a bit before we got started.
Cathy chose yellow and blue. I went with my teal (I have sooo much) and purple.
We each used three layers (one layer of domestic 56 batt in between) and tried to get the fish mouth like Galina had hers not too successfully. I guess we need practice. We also used gems for eyes.
I made separate prefelt for fins and tail.
When I got to the prefelt stage on my fish, I cut out and attached the tail and fins. I couldn’t find the resists for my gills when it came time to take the resists out.
We weren’t trying to make exact fish, but have fun coming up with our own fantasy fish.
Cathy did get the gill resist out, but it ended up too wide, so she embroidered it to close it up. She also added some roving around the eye and needlefelted it to get it to stay.
I decided to work on another fish that week and ended up with two more just experimenting with colors and embellishments. I managed to get gills on the second one. I also added bottom fins by needlefelting them on. The eyes were hard to get even on each side. I got a little better at the eyes, but they’re still not perfect.
I’m not sure how I’ll display them. I originally thought I hang them in the bathroom, but I don’t think my husband would approve of flying fish.
I’ve been re-organising my supplies lately, and one of the things I did was put my dyed silk products into one box, and my natural undyed silk supplies in another. While I was doing this I had an idea to make a silky cocoon type pod. I had a look on google images and liked the look of ones which were more fibrey, ‘scruffy’ looking. So I started by really piling the silk on to my resist. I added a couple of bunched up silk hankies, a silk hankie I’d drafted into roving, silk throwster’s waste, schappe silk from wollknoll, different types of silk noil, some coccon strippings. I can’t find my undyed silk carrier rods, but I did find a little bag of ‘fluff’ I’d carded from silk carrier rod scraps a few years ago, so I put that on too. I did a layer of 18.5 Mic Merino on top of the silk, then on one side I lay lengths of white pencil roving. I used 23 Mic Merino for the second layer, and then 2 layers of English 56s. I do like the way it turned out, but I didn’t expect it to be so ‘neat’!
I thought with all the silk I’d piled on it’d be a lot more fibrey, but it does have nice texture and structure and there’s a lot of different shades.
This is a closer look at some texture:
And this is some of the throwster’s waste:
I wondered if some of the texture and features would show up more with a light inside, so I used a bit of sewing thread to attach it to a ceiling light to see:
You can definitely see more, and here you can see the ridges from the pencil roving better:
It looks quite creepy with the light in, I think 🙂
My friend Mary came over to get some mohair carded. We mixed it with some merino to make it easer for her to spin later. I have never done mohair before. It was very fluffy. It added a lot of volume to the batts.
This is the batt. It is not as compact as a straight merino batt. If you wanted it more blended you would split the batt into layers and put it through it again.
She also had some left over bits from other projects that we carded together.
Now for the surprise. My son came in from feeding the bottle lambs there lunch with a very noisy bucket.
We have a rogue chicken and she hatched 11 chicks in a hidden nest in the barn. They are now in a box with water that they splashed everywhere and some food that tastes best if you stand in it.
It will be interesting to see how they turn out. They will get a pen next to the older chicks today. They can’t be left with mom or they will not survive. Between the barn cats and the wild predators they all disappear when we have let them try to raise them.
And here are the yellows, browns and reds bamboo staple:
I tried a couple of shades of Rose fibre top (the photos of these were blurred) and they turned out well so I did some bamboo tops:
They came out really nice, so I used up the last of the blue and purple dyes on some viscose top:
And since I’d already made a mess in the kitchen and still had the table out, I started dyeing with acid dyes. Only these silk carrier rods were dry enough to photograph:
