linen – Felting and Fiber Studio

Bengala Dyes by Guest Artist Cathy Wycliff

November 9, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 15 comments

Our guest artist today is Cathy Wycliff aka Luvswool.
Over the past couple of years, I have been experimenting with different kinds of dyes. I started with Wilton icing gels, playing it safe for my first experience. I moved on to acid dyes, with the encouragement of Forum members, and I was delighted with the bright, beautiful colors.

Then I tried dyeing with natural plants, like madder, logwood, and osage orange. I ended up with some beautiful dyed wool. Marilyn and I brewed an indigo vat last summer, dyeing everything from lace curtains to wool and T-shirts. This summer I experimented with eco-printing and had some success, but a few failures as well.

When I studied Saori weaving in Minneapolis recently, my instructor, Chiaki O’Brien, also introduced me to Bengala dyes.

They are natural dyes made from the soil in Japan. I was excited to try yet another type of dyeing. I had the trial set of three colors–pink, orange and gray. I liked the idea of natural dyes, already prepared in liquid form, and non-toxic with no boiling water and no mordants. Following is my pictorial on two sessions of Bengala dyes.

I dyed some cotton, linen, silk ribbon and a silk scarf to see if there were any difference on how each dyed.

Session 1

Session 2

If anyone is interested in using these dyes, they are available for purchase from Saori instructors throughout the world.

In the USA, you will find them here: saoristudiofun.com/bengala-dyes/

Otherwise, you can google “Bengala dyes” and find offerings from other parts of the world, including Japan, where they are made. I know for sure that Australia, Canada and the UK have the dyes available from Saori instructors. The dyes are particularly
useful when dyeing with young children.

Thanks Cathy for sharing your experience with us about these Bengala dyes!

Summer Blues

August 26, 2014 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 22 comments

When Cathy (Luvswool) and I went to the Midwest Fiber Fair a couple of weeks ago, in our conversations I mentioned I had an indigo dyeing kit I’d like to try. With some discussion on the forum about the smell indigo produced, I wanted to try to do it while the weather was still nice outside. Neither of us had used indigo before, so, I invited Cathy to join me in a day of dyeing.

I didn’t have a plan for what I wanted to dye or any specific projects in mind to use the dyed materials. But Cathy came well prepared with plenty of roving and fabrics to dye.

To save some time, I had set up the buckets for wetting and indigo along with the plastic coverings before she came. It was an overcast day to begin with with a nice breeze across the yard.

We followed the instructions, mixing the indigo, then the chemicals and stirred it in then let it sit for an hour. But there was no bloom as described. We reread the instructions and stirred again; then decided to skim the top and begin.

After the first batch, we returned the runny bloom back to the bucket and let our fabric oxide. It all looked fine, so we continued the process with the rest. Once the first batch was fully oxidized we tag teamed and I washed and rinsed while she dipped the next batch. Strangely enough after the first batch the bloom began to grow.

With a brief break for lunch, we managed to get everything into the pot we both had to dye along with the breaks for letting the pot sit after stirring. It was a busy day with the dyeing, rinsing and washing. And the day got hotter and sunnier as we worked.

Cathy had spent the evening before rubber banding a large piece of cotton gauze.

She also brought along a big pile of Domestic 56s roving, some kid mohair yarn, nettle and lace table cloth, miscellaneous bits and pieces of fabric.

I dyed two blouses that were old, but stained, a very old handkerchief with my name on it, yarn, mulberry silk, pencil roving, thick and thin yarn, a linen doily, some merino and cheviot roving.

I had wadded up some cotton voile and rubber banded it all around. The end result is the piece draped on the chair. I like the random patterns it produced.

Cathy brought some corks with her, so I used the corks on a piece of silk gauze.

She also dyed some old thrift store “lace” bedspread pieces, an old linen pillow case, a piece of muslin and a cat mat.

Since it was getting late in the afternoon and Cathy had a long drive home, we packed up her goodies and she finished rinsing and drying some of her items at home the next day.

We were pleased with the outcome of our “Summer Blues” and the opportunity to give some old items new life and others some pretty blue color.

Ingeo, Corriedale and Texture

June 29, 2014 zedster66 Comments 28 comments

I’m doing a craft fair next Sunday, 6th July at Victoria Baths, in Manchester, so I haven’t had chance to do any felting this week yet, so these two pieces are from a couple of weeks ago. This first one is dark brown Corriedale wool tops and Ingeo Fibre. Ingeo is a bit different to other fibres I use, it isn’t shiny as such, but it does have a sheen, and there’s also a soft almost ‘fluffy’ feel to it, without it actually looking fluffy. Lyn found this link for how it is made.

Here’s a closer view:

Here’s a Supermacro close up:

And here’s a supermacro of an area where the fibre were laid more thickly:

A while ago Marilyn sent me some fibres, one of them being some Domestic 56s wool tops, I tried them out on a texturey piece I made, mostly for the base, but also to add some texture between the base and top layer of 18.5 mic Merino. I liked the way they felted, similar to our English 56s.

I also used some Bluefaced Leicester Noil between the 2 layers. This is lower across the surface:

Some of the embellishment fibres I used were soy staple fibre, viscose and flax

I also used milk and bamboo fibres.

Lots of ‘other’ fibres

March 31, 2012 zedster66 Comments 13 comments

Although a lot of the speciality fibre tops seem to look very similar at first, especially the white ones, they all have their own unique qualities. It’s interesting to try the different fibres on different types of wool to find out how they work together. Sometimes, they really compliment each other. Other times, like Banana fibre on grey Suffolk, they give interesting textural results. One thing I like to try is lots of different fibres on one type of wool. This shows the differences in how the fibres work with the same wool and also which would work well together with the same wool. I recently got some nice brown Finnish wool tops and tried 7 different speciality fibres with it. I alternated between the white/silvery fibres and the creamy/golden fibres. In order from Top to Bottom, I used: Banana fibre tops; Soybean tops; Ingeo tops; Flax; Milk Protein fibre tops; Hemp and Ramie tops.

Earlier this year I made a Merino and Hemp pouch which was ‘lined’ with cotton gauze. The texture was gorgeous. I’ve used the gauze a few times along with other fibres, and it always looks great, so I thought I’d try it on its own with some dark brown Corriedale. I’d planned to use it just as a test piece, but I really liked how it turned out, so I tried it in a frame I’d recently bought and loved the way it looked.

Finnish wool with Banana; Soybean; Ingeo; Flax; Milk protein; Hemp; Ramie

What have you been working on lately? Do you have a favourite combination of other/speciality fibres that work well together? Or a fibre or fabric like the gauze which makes a great feature by itself?

*** If you want to see decent sized pictures, click on ‘Permalink’ under the photo. For some reason that carousel thing makes them ridiculously small

Natural Wools and Natural Fibres

February 28, 2012 zedster66 Comments 9 comments

One of the projects I’ve been working on in the last few months is using natural coloured wools with natural ‘other’ felting fibres. It’s not always easy working out which fibre will match with which colour wool because they often look very different when felted, and some fibres which seem to felt well on most wools, suddenly don’t with another. A couple of natural fibres I really like are soybean fibre and flax (linen).

Flax looks like dried grass, it doesn’t look like it’d felt very well, but it does. I used it here with natural brown Merino tops.

merino and flax before felting — Merino and Flax before felting

After felting it is a lot softer and shinier than before.

merino and flax after felting — Merino and Flax after felting

Soybean top is gorgeous. It is soft, golden yellow and much shinier than silk. I used it with some natural black Jacob tops. After felting, I’d left it to dry on a table, and walking past, I saw the soybean top shining like gold in the dim light. I took a few photos hoping it’d show up and was really surprised when it did. It looked gorgeous. It wasn’t as easy to capture the true colour and shine once it had dried, but it really is a gorgeous fibre.