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.

Sheep Day 2011 - more photos

Tina has just sent over some photos she sent of me demonstrating at Sheep Day earlier this year. When demonstrating I never take photos of myself nor what I'm doing so I will share hers instead. It was a really windy day so I just used the microwave and not gas stove.

Before I do any dyeing I use an acrylic yarn to tie off the skein in about 4-5 places so that it will not tangle (or at least that is the theory)

What you can't see is that the painted yarn is on cling film ready for rolling into a sausage to be "cooked" in the microwave. If you do this make sure that the steam can escape both ends.

Once out and cooled you can then carefully cut away the cling film to reveal beautiful yarn. This is a Blue Faced Leicester 100g,  DK weight bought ready for dyeing. I love it so much that I haven't sold it and it is in my stash waiting to be knitted up into a scarf.

Sheep Day 2011

Saturday May 21st 2011

I will be demonstrating dyeing at Wool Day on the 21st May at Unique Cottage Farm Studios in Spalding. This was a fantastic day last year and as well as sheep they will also have some alpacas to look at. Throughout the day there will be demonstrations on sheep shearing, weaving, dyeing (me!), spinning and felting. You can have a go at knitting, making stained glass as well as lots of other stuff.

I have also been making some sheepy things to sell - here' s a quick peek

The sheep soap (not very clear on the right) is handmade and coconut. My kitchen smelt heavenly when I was making these.

Hope to see you there



Sheep Day 2010

Today was sheep day at Unique Cottage Farm studio and the sun shone, this is the studio before the crowds arrive. For some though the day started with a hair cut,


This sheep lost her woolly coat thanks to the steady hands of the shearer.


Once sheared she looked like this -


I can't remember which breed of sheep this was but she was not impressed about the whole thing, her lamb missed being sheared though.

I was demonstrating dyeing of wool, roving and everything else woolly. I used Blue Face Leicester and Merino wool. I had some very nice 4 ply superwash sock yarn which took the dye really well. Today I dyed using the microwave and I used Kentex easidye dyes. These are a fantastic dye which I would really recommend. The dye comes as crystals and you do not need to add vinegar or any other substance. After colouring the wool/fleece, cook for 10 minutes in a microwave and hey presto. You do need to use a low heat and take care not to felt the wool, the trick is to not agitate it too much whilst warm. I did go "au natural" and used some daffodil heads to create a yellow dye colour. These had been dried so they were crispy, I put some into a muslin bag and boiled in water to release the colour before putting the fleece into it. I still have the muslin and am hoping that some of the colour will stay in the fabric. I might boil in again with some cotton just to see what might happen. doing so much demonstrating meant I didn't really take any photos of what I was doing. I have brought home some wet yarn which I will photograph tomorrow.

Once nice thing about today was that I meet up with several fellow bloggers. Here are Sweetiepie and Trudi from Quilt Prolifically counting sheep.

I also meet up with Julie from Mixed Media and another lovely lady who will have to forgive me as I can't remember the name of her blog.

As well as the dyeing there were lots of very talented people spinning, weaving, knitting, and felting wool with lots of sheep paintings as well on display. I think you could even make a sheep stained glass hanging. There were also some people selling lovely things but I didn't really get a chance to have a look round.



Even Sweetiepie caught the woolly bug and started some knitting.

Wooly playtime

This evening Sweetiepie and I met up to have a go at wool dyeing. I think that I should have taken her advice about wearing gloves though. The only problem is that I am a Godmother on Sunday, anyone know where I can get some of those white cotton gloves??

We had some wool wadding, some merino fleece and some sock weigh and dk wool. We used kemtex easidye colours which gave us pale to medium shades. We were both impressed though at the colours we got.

This was the sock Blue Face Leicester which we hand painted. We tried to blend the colours together so as not to have definite stripes. It's not too clear but it was hand painted on cling film before being "cooked" in the microwave.

We used scarlet and lemon yellow. After washing the colours are just gorgeous
but I can't seem to get a good photo. The yarn is still damp but the socks are going to be fantastic. I am a slow knitter as other things get in the way so I have a small stash of sock wool. This is going to be right up there at the top though once I get going again.

Looking though my photos I took none of the wadding which we painted and "cooked". On one piece of wadding we painted with yellow and scarlet, it was then speckled with some turquoise. After cooking this became a wonderful moss green colour, very Autumnal. Sweetpie took these home, I will catch up with her next week and get some photos. We did make these small wadding swatches for my sketch book which gives an idea of colour though

This is the lemon/scarlet sock yarn with some lavender/cerise dk. Again not a great photo.