Thursday 27 December 2007

Shirt!

This is the result of the baggies-in-the-sun and they are just beautiful! I love dyeing and the wonderful effects that can be achieved. The Princess loves them and wears them whenever she can. The flannels turned out quite well too and I have even started embroidering on them. I hope to have some up for sale on January 1st. I am going to try and start a little business and what better date to do it than the 1st of the year!!

Friday 21 December 2007

Dodgy Business..


Are these baggies the start of something or just a lot of wishful thinking..? I wanted to dye and embroider some wash cloths, and maybe sell them on Oztion, to help pay for the software I want for the embroidery machine. I am thinking maybe the dye is too intense again and I should have toned it down a bit. It is a good learning experience anyway.. and if some of these sell, good on me, and if they don't, the family will get them as birthday presents!! I did 3 little Princess-sized shirts too.. and she loves them so much, I can't sell them!!

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Perfectly Pretty Pinks


My latest effort.. beautiful pinks.. they are so nice, I am making some more!! I was going to use them as part of a backing for a baby quilt, but now I think they will be the backing and the backing that I have that there isn't enough of, will be for something else. The white tone-on-tone didn't turn out too well.. but I love the back of it! If I had dyed it plain instead of mottled, it would look a lot better. All part of learning.. Next time I go to Tricia's, I will buy a metre or five and see what damage I can do to it with different colours.. :)

Sunday 9 December 2007

Thread Stand


Finally I have put my thread stand together. It was a flat-pack that I made and bought home from school. It was easier than bringing it home on the bus fully made!! I haven't tried it out yet, it hasn't dried properly.. maybe tomorrow. It was a whole lot cheaper than buying a horrible plastic one and looks a whole lot better too..

Saturday 8 December 2007

Bluesday Results


Here are the results of Thursdays effort. A nice range of blue and turquoise. Some of my stapled labels washed off but I am hoping that by process of elimination, I can work out what is what with them! There has to be an easy way to mark them.. probably before I stick them into the soda ash would be the go!!

Thursday 6 December 2007

Bluesday


I am lucky there is only one person that reads my blog and they don't mind pictures of jars!! Today the weather was a disgusting 38 degrees C and I thought.. "what a great day to dye". Out came the blues and away I went.. I even experimented a little.. the tall jar has 5 dye concentrate, quarter cup water and quarter cup soda ash mixture. Wonder how that will turn out!?
I stapled numbers to each piece and I hope they are readable after the wash! I might finally be able to write the 'secret' recipes for each bit.

Monday 3 December 2007

More Results


Not quite the colour range I had imagined... they are better!! So bright..! It seems I mixed the dye wrong.. I only put quater of a cup of water instead of half a cup. There was enough dye to do all this and none left over. Seems to have made a difference to the brightness of the fabric though.
Some of them have hardly any mottled effect at all and I am not sure why.. ? Is the colour too intense? Is 20 hours too long to sit in dye? Did I squeeze too much soda ash solution out of them? Did I wiggle them around too much in the dye?
None of the marking I put in the corner of each one came out, so I have almost no idea which is which and how to recreate the colour!

Sunday 2 December 2007

Dye Another Day !

Another afternoon of fun with dye. This time there is a range of colours.. turquoise, fuchsia, oranges, green, purple and a brown - cant wait to see what these turn out like. There is no sun today so they wont get warm. Hope it doesn't make too much difference. This time I wrote all the details of each piece down, but I forgot to mark each piece of fabric before I started. I did mark them as I went so I hope the marks are still there after I rinse and wash them or I wont know which is which!! :)