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Dyeing curls for felted sheep

Dyeing curls for felted sheep

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I am getting ready to teach a group how to make felted sheep, Like these I used for a post, quite a while ago.

The class is this evening( Wednesday) so freshly made cute sheep will be next week. I like to use Blue Faced Leicester sheep curls for this as they are nice small curls. I had a few colours but not enough variety.

I had a couple hundred grams of the white so it was time to dye. My usual dye pot is really big. a stock pot. Much too big for this job. YOu will have to trust me on the next part as I forgot to take pictures. I was doing too many things at once. I have a nice large stew pot that isn’t too deep but I want to use it for stew again so I got a metal bowl that could be sacrificed and created a double boiler.  I placed handfuls of soaked white locks into a medium freezer bag. I made up a small amount of dye poured it on top of the locks and topped it up with water until everything was submerged. I  squeezed most of the are out and popped the bag into the water on the top of the double boiler. I did the next colour the same and popped it in as well. I could do 2 at a time.  I made up 3 more colours. the aim was to have dark purple, lilac, lime green, pink and magenta. this method was great. the top edge of the bag was above the water so I could easily pick it up to see if the water was clear. Once clear I took it out and put it aside to cool. this is also a good idea when you dye. to leave the wool in the dye bath until cool, especially if it refuses to take up all the colour. You will usually find that when cooled it often has taken up the extra dye. I have to admit I seldom do this as I need to get the next batch of wool into the dye pot, reusing the dye water. With the small bags, it was easy to put them aside to cool.

This is the result.

Now, you are probably thinking that there seems to be more than one dark purple. That is because I used way too much lilac in the lilac dye bag.  I ended up with the 2 purples in the middle. the top one in truth is quite vibrant and the bottom one more deep with a little lilac leaning wool on one edge. I had hoped it would split giving me a purple and blue mix. There is even a warning on the Dharma chart saying it can split. No such luck, isn’t that always the way?  They looked so much the same when they were wet I did another batch and although it looks kind of dark here on my screen, it is pretty much lilac. I tried to adjust the colour but then the green started to look kinda funky.

So that’s my prep for the class. This is an easy class for me because everything I need fits in one small bin.

I will show you the results next week.

 

 

Wool for Sheep

Wool for Sheep

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In my last post I talked about getting some felted body parts ready for making sheep pins. http://wp.me/p1WEqk-1o2  The other thing the sheep need so they will not be naked is wool.

First I had to pick curls out of a Blue Faced Leicester Sheep fleece I have. After having done this you appreciate why buying prepared curls costs so much. It takes for ever to pull the little curls out.  This is something you do chatting with friends or watching TV.

curls fleece

The next part is more fun. My sheep like to have colourful fleeces so they must have their wool dyed pretty colours. I soak the wool while I am picking out dye colours. They take up dye more evenly that way.  Sometimes I do not soak them so they dye unevenly. You get some interesting results that way. Usually they end up 2 tone. I use acid dyes.

curls soaking

I dye the curls in small batches in some small plastic containers I got at the dollar store.

dye in bowl dye in bowl 2

I add the premixed dye and then some extra water to just cover the wool. Then into the microwave for a minuet or two. When it comes out I transfer the wool and dye to a zip lock baggy to sit until it is cool.

dye in bag

I do it this way because when I have tried putting a zip lock bag in the microwave sometimes it get too hot in just one spot and a hole melts in the bag. This way is a little more work but no holes in the bags.

I also over dyed some locks I had done earlier. I think they were done with onion skins. They where a horrible yellow shade I wouldn’t use for anything. The don’t look to bad in the picture but in person, yuck.

curls soaking yellow

I decided on brown and black. I already had lots of green and some orange. They both came out brown. I could do the black again to make it go black but the brown is a nice shade so I will leave it. They are the two at the bottom of the picture. Sorry about the quality of the picture but it was too windy to go outside for a picture.

dyed curls done

Now all I have to do is put all the parts and the curls together.