DyE, wool, stitch

Things have been a little busy around here this week. The studio has been full of DS and I working on Festival of Quilts entries and workshop samples.

 

This week I taught a woolly dye day. We started out using a few natural dyes on wool that I had pre- mordanted.

 

Everyone was very busy painting yarn, dyeing fleece and wool tops in pans using chemical dyes in the afternoon.

 

The top right was dyed with turmeric. 

 

Wool drying outside. The pinky and blue/green had been hand spun.

At the end of the day Trish went round and used up all the dye left over in the pots. After cooking in the microwave these are her stunning results on hand spun fleece.

I have spent this weekend up in Ludford with members of the Quilters Guild region ten. Lots of laughs, technical hitches and stitching. I'll post more tomorrow.

Elderberry pink

Thank you to everyone who has commented about my Diploma. I think I have been persuaded to have a little end of course give away so I will reveal all next week!

 I often get asked how I store leaves, flowers, roots etc for dyeing. The simple answer is that each one is kept differently. I have plastic cups of elderberries from last Summer in the freezer. I was going into the freezer for a pizza and became distracted by my berry cups.

 I took out four cups and each one was tipped into a bit of nylon tight. These were knotted once full of berries so no plant matter could escape.

 Add a little heat and hot water, mash with an old potato masher, add fabric that has been mordanted and you get pink soup.

In the mix I have some fabric wrapped in some screws so it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

City and Guilds Dilpoma Exhibition

For those of you who know me or have been following my blog for a long time I can now shout that I have "COMPLETED MY CITY AND GUILDS DIPLOMA" It has taken me four and a half years but I now have the certificate. You can view my online exhibition by clicking here

I completed it with Linda Kemshall, DesignMatters and I had such fantastic support from my tutors. There was lots of support and fantastic resources to download. It was a distance learning course so I did have to be very self disciplined but I got there in the end. If you are thinking about doing a City and Guilds qualification I really can recommend them.

Corsage Making

 I had a fantastic day at the studio today with five ladies doing "Stitch for Texture". It was a very busy but fun day. I will share photos tomorrow. Yesterday there was a little corsage making happening.

 Thankfully everyone let me take a photo of their chest! Apologies if your corsage is not here, the rest were fuzzy (blame me!)

 Afterwards I raced home to collect a few of these ready for the dye pot.

Jubilee Picnic Burghley House

Yesterday I was asked to demonstrate at The Queen's Jubilee picnic which was held at Burghley House in Stamford. I was based in the Lincolnshire tent with Gillian of Strawberry Glass, Carol Parker was yarnbombing and their were lots of other creative people and food people.

I think that 10,00 people had been invited to enjoy the picnic.

 After Her Majesty arrived by helicopter she was filmed onto all the large screens so everyone could see her.

 If you look just behind the corsages I was next to some very nice men from a local brewery. I did get a bottle of beer for DH.

 The Red Arrows did a fly by and there was an acrobatic display.

 This is an image of everyone gathering by the side of the road before The Queen left.

Finally, an in the car photo (no I sadly didn't take this one)

It was a fantastic day but very tiring. I have a Cake and Make tomorrow and a Stitch for Texture workshop at the studio on Saturday. Off to bed now (well after sewing some binding on first)

I can see a rainbow

My aim was to post these last week. Last Wednesday was the Quilt Group at the studio and half way through the evening there was a heavy shower. Almost immediately there was the most amazing bright rainbow. It was a complete arc which  I wasn't able to get a complete picture of.

 This was the view looking east, below the image taken looking west at the same time.

Lots of work has been happening at the studio, making corsages for a royal appointment this Wednesday.

Lots of stitching.

DS has started his FoQ entry.

Today is a paperwork/admin day. I must not be tempted by stitch!

Onion Skin Dyeing

I have been collecting onion skins and decided to experiment with them on pre-mordanted cotton fabric.

One piece of fabric got wrapped around the onion skins in a bundle and one just had a swim in the boiled up onion skins

The bundle was put in a steamer (not emerged in water) whilst the other continued to swim with skins!

This was the bundle before unwrapping.

Both were "cooked" for the same amount of time and had the same weight of onion skins. The resulting pictures do not do justice to the colours and texture achieved. I think I need to take some outside. The bottom image shows a little of the stitching I have started.