Some more dyeing photo's

I am expecting a baby in November and decided the baby clothes for the hospital were just too white! So I had some fun with my son, Matthew 6 and some dyes. These are the results....



This was a t shirt I had laying around I thought I'd brighten up too

I had made up a large batch of dye a few days before as I tye dyed tshirts with a local Brownie group.


They really enjoyed it, and the results were very colourful as you can see.

This project followed on from making teddy bear t shirts at the school, where the children (8-9 yrs old) dyed a piece of cloth then sewed it into a t shirt for a teddy bear using a sewing machine. There were 54 kids and they all really enjoyed something that was so diffrent - more pictures of it to follow when I find them!

Some finished weaving!

These are some of the tea towels I wove, they came off the loom early this year. They are based on the friendship towels from Handwoven Design collection 18, the cotton used is 10/2 from texere. I dyed it and each towel has a diffrent colour weft.


Close up of the weave


Some of the skeins hanging on the line drying after I dyed them

I've now had requests for xmas presents from family so am weaving more in diffrent colours - at least while I can reach the loom over the baby bump!

Some miscellanious dyeing from the summer

Been busy playing over the summer thought I'd show you some pictures.

This is where I do a lot of my dyeing, its covered by a gazebo so I don't struggle to much in the sun! Also makes clean up easy - hose the whole area down and its done.

This is the finished result drying in the sun.

This is the skeins after drying waiting to be wound into balls

The following pictures show some of the works in progress, I use a steamer to set acid dyes or my cookpot with jars inside.

This is what one of the skeins looks like crocheted into squares - can you tell I love bright colours!

More to follow now I've got the pictures off the camera at last!

part 2 of ikat and warp painting

This is part 2 on the Ikat and warp painting.

I warped the loom for the table mats first.

warped at 28epi

table mat 1

table mat 2

coasters warped at 105 epi

close up of coaster

I loved the way the colour really zing in the coasters and the recipient liked them too.

Results of the UKWSDOnline Ikat workshop

The UKWSDOnline Guild holds workshops online each month. They held an Ikat workshop in November run by Karen Madigan. Its taken me slightly longer than planned to complete this but I am happy with the results which I used for an exchange. This is why I haven't written about this as I went along.

This post will have a lot of pictures!

I decided to make the warp slightly wider than suggested in the workshop notes so the results could be used as table mats when using the looser set and coasters at the tighter.

I used 2/20 cotton sett at
28epi (2 threads per dent in 14 dpi reed) for the table mats measuring 13 1/4" in the reed
105epi (7,8 threads per dent in 14 dpi reed) for the coasters

the threads were as follows
10 blk, 20 blk/white, 62 colour 1, 20 ikat, 40 colour 2, 20 ikat, 40 colour 2, 20 ikat, 42 colour 2, 20 ikat, 62 colour 1, 20 blk/white, 10 blk
this is a total of 386 ends.

Now the photo's of the process.

the warp laid out ready for dyeing.

this is the tied ikat warp on my warping wheel

this is colour warp 2

this is warp colour 1

continued in next post!

Tatting threads for Mark

Mark was complaining he didn't have the right coloured threads for some tatting he wanted to do. I had plenty of white and ecru so I had a play - This was done before the T-shirt dyeing but I hadn't got the pictures off his camera card.

These are the skeins in balls.

These are the skeins as dyed. It always amazes me just how diffrent the balls look compared to the skeins but I was happy with the way they all came out. They are crochet cotton in size 10 and size 20. I find because of the twist they need a long soak to get really wetted out, these soaked for 3 days in the end.

When Marks finished his current tatting projects I'm hoping he'll let me post them - watch this space...

Tie dyeing and using "old" procion mx dye in water solution

I volunteered to work on crafts at my local primary school. We are making a tie dyed T-shirt for a teddy bear with the 8/9 yr olds. We started with a piece of cloth which was tie dyed, and are in the process of sewing it together on a machine 1 child at a time (with 52 children this is taking some time!). The children are really enjoying this as am I! I have spent time making this into a project with all the documentation needed for the school so they can repeat it in future years.
The picture on the left shows my sample T-shirt, the one below some of the childrens work.


As I was working in the school I mixed the procion dyes into solution with water (the tie dyed cloth had been soaked in a soda ash solution). Having not done this before I mixed 10g dye into 1 litre water which is what we used on the cloth. We used yellow, magenta and turquoise as these colours seem to mix best (with the boys size T-shirts I had previosly dyed. The children put the dye straight onto the pre-treated cloth in this dilution.

I had quite a bit left over after 2 days dyeing at the school and as the next week was half term we had a tie dye day dyeing T shirts. By this time the solutions were around 10 days old.

The photo above shows the results. The coverage was good and the colours just as vibrant (not the best pictures!)

The picture above shows another batch done with the same dye solution at 21 days. The colours are paler by comarison (the bright sunshine doesn't help comparison).


I dyed another batch of T-shirts with the solutions being 28 days old and the colours were slightly paler than the 21 day batch. The yellow fared worse than the magenta and turquoise coming out very pale. (haven't managed to take photo's yet)

The T-shirts are destined to be used as prizes at the school as so many of the children loved the yellow/purple starburst T-shirt I dyed (picture top right of 10 day batch) and the prizes are a little diffrent to the usual things they get to use!

Hope fully I'll get back to the school to get the sewing finished next week, while the children are still really excited about it!