It's Been a While.....

I feel like I'm getting back in the swing of things and at last have some things to report.

A bit more dyeing, with an 'e', for a start. This time a 12 step colour wheel covering the basic colours. As per Elizabeth barton's instructions the dyes are all mixed....

.....and cloth has been torn and labelled........

......the first session yielded this delicious result......like a handful of lollipops.......

The best results came from the scraps of silk organza - how I wish I had an excuse to dye metres of it........

The pale Arashi Shibori from the previous dyeing session was overdyed with pure dye solution and produced a much darker shade.......and looks quite dramatic - if I do say so myself.

 Back with more news soon,

Sue xxxx

Greyscale II

I repeated the greyscale gradation using three different fabrics to see what the differences would be and it was quite enlightening........

The initial results using sheeting (a slighly ivory / cream base cloth) which produced results more blueish grey than what I would immediately call grey......

Left page: results using a very white cotton base cloth. Right page: results using Kona cotton (PFD 1287) which also has a slight cream tone.

White cotton gauzy muslin and undyed samples of each cloth.

The two very white base cloths yielded results closer to the dye painted onto white paper - which I guess shouldn't really be a surprise.....

Following Elizabeth Barton's suggestion I also made small posters using a small sample from each piece. By putting them side-by-side the differences are more apparent. Each fabric (left to right - sheeting, white cotton, Kona 1287 and muslin) was dyed using the same concentration of dye solution + water.......

The four sets of fabric together.....

Snippets of each fabric and colour .....

Jumping ahead to lesson three while the dye was out I tried some Arashi Shibori...

I think I will rewrap this one and overdye it using a darker concentration of the same colour...

This one has some areas that should be usable........

All in all a great learning experience. Hope to show something made with it in the near future,

Sue xxxx

PS: My record keeping is not usually quite as neat and tidy as this but I rather like the look of it..

MIA

I feel like I have been missing in action. Certainly there hasn't been much sewing action but summer usually brings a whole other set of activities that historically (as in my history) tend to take precedence.......

There's the tennis for a start, so the TV is on for many more hours than is usual. It's also a time for catching up with family and friends and usually a short trip away to the Snowy Mountains. (This time with lots of photos of eucalyptus trees and leaves for one of my upcoming projects.....

For me this trip signals Christmas is over and I can put my feet up with a good book or two.....(see 'Happy New Year' post), notably these.....and start to plan new projects.

.......very different but I enjoyed both.    

There have been some houseguests, with more due soon..........

......and two batches of crabapple jelly, the second one twice cooked as it didn't properly set the first time - which has intensified both the glorious colour and the flavour.

We have been to three very different but highly rated movies - 'The Book Thief', The Railway Man' and 'Saving Mr Banks'............

.........and another batch of greyscale fabric dyeing (which needs its own post).

Add to that a couple of swims and a few walks and it has been a busy but pleasureable time - just not much blogging......

I am making a concerted effort to get back on track before my head bursts - it is so full of ideas - and it's time for some action instead of thinking and reading.

Hopefully back soon,

Sue xxxx

Pink Bags

At this time of year one of my favourite stores has a massive sale and the goodies all come home in pink bags.

Armed with some money from my parents for Christmas to buy something for our new kitchen (sometime this year we hope) we had the opportunity to call in - and guess what? We came out with a large pink bag......

.......and in the bag.......

All washed and ready for action......

We also have a kitchen planner visiting on Tuesday - so that seems like a good first step, especially in view of the fact that my oven just died a little more today - right in the middle of baking biscuits and a cake for tomorrow's Redberry Quilter's  morning tea.....I'll be shopping in the morning....apologies ladies...

Sue xxxx

Lesson 1 - Grey scale

Or in my case, let's call it blue-grey scale.......

The dyeing session itself was both fun and informative, however the results were a little different to what was anticipated - my fabrics are much bluer than expected........the photos don't do the true colours justice - you may have to take my word on that.

 Next to a commercial grey fabric they definitely look bluer.......

However, next to a blue fabric they look greyer......

So follows a bit of analysis and the answer I think lies here......my PFD fabric (sheeting) is slightly more ivory / cream than white which I'm pretty sure has skewed the results a bit......(not that I'm complaining, I actually prefer creams to stark white and the colours I have are beautiful - and in fact very 'me'.....

Here they are in the photo edited into B&W.....

I can see a couple of issues with the gradation as well - there could be more differentiation between the various stages.

I also left them overnight with the soda ash solution on them so maybe that is something else to change.

I found some white cotton in my stash so I think the experiment bears repeating after I wash it in case it's not PFD.

Whatever the result I have some lovely additions to my stash of hand-dyed fabric and a bit more knowledge under my belt about the process of fabric dyeing and the relative relationships between colours. They should be fine for my 'homework' when I get to it - a few things to do before then,

Sue xxxx

New Year, New Creative Challenges.....

At last there has been time to dive into the new challenges that have been waiting patiently in the wings. Yesterday a little monoprinting (more on that another time) and today the first foray into the new dyeing (with an 'e') process as per our online class with Elizabeth Barton.

Lesson one involves dyeing a grey scale using various amounts of black dye....

Initial results in the sketch book look promising........

These little promises of beauty can slumber overnight and we'll see what comes out in the wash tomorrow....

Sue xxxx

Good Ideas

Some ideas prove to be quite good, for example........

.......these seemed to hit the spot with a family lunch on Sunday.......

On the other hand, this might be debateable. Coming home from our fishing trip we passed trees on the roadside loaded (or should that be 'laden'?) with crabapples. As it's now 2 years since we (I) made crabapple jelly we thought it was time to make some more. (The first batch was eaten and gifted very quickly.....)

So, ten minutes later we had this......

I'm not quite sure what possessed us to pick two bags full - particularly as we said we wouldn't take many......was it because they were free or maybe a safety net in case the fruit was damaged or riddled with insects - but no, it was in excellent condition.....We weren't positive they were true crabapples - but they were certainly inedible raw....

Yesterday the process began with weighing and washing the fruit, .....

Cutting it up roughly - fairly quick as it was in good condition -

...and cooking it down. 

Then into a bag to drain overnight......

.....and today continued with adding the sugar (and sugar and sugar) to the juice and boiling it up til it jelled.

Til finally we (I) ended up with this........

Looks right, tastes right, but I still have one bag full of crabapples and several tubs of applesauce in the freezer....and I'm not sure I have the stamina to process anymore because when we arrived home I found these in the mail......

.......and lessons one and two for this class in my email inbox.......

So it's time to get out of the kitchen for a while because as I'm sure you can appreciate I'm very keen (dying even) to get back to dyeing (with an 'e', as always) and trying my hand at designing with the fabrics created......

Til next time,

Sue xxxx