Fabrics

In the old days I'd have had all this dyeing done, washed, ironed and ready to go in a day! It's a bit different now. You'll have noticed the title of this blog is Between Sunset and Dawn, well that's when I do most of my work at the moment. Trouble is when a certain little toddler goes down with the lurgy and can't settle in the evenings without constant cuddles, the plan goes completely out of the window. She's woken up this morning looking a little better and judging by the number of stickers already firmly planted on herself, me, the cat, the carpet and the walls, feeling much better too. Hopefully normal schedule will be resumed shortly. Let's hope so - we're setting up at the NEC on Wednesday and there's a huge amount to get done between now and then!

While Amelie had some fresh air with Granddad yesterday Mom and I did blitz the hand dyed fabrics and get them ironed and cut. You'll recall will my thread dyeing technique I always put fabrics under the threads to absorb the excess dye. This helps with nice controlled dyeing of the threads, but the bonus is you get gorgeous coordinated fabrics too! This one might be one of my favourites from the latest batch…

The crystal-like marks occur because I'm using a low water technique so the fabric isn't swishing about in a bucket with loads of water. Instead it's crumpled, packed fairly tightly, has the dyed added and a bit of a squash and a squeeze to help distribute and merge the colours. Then it's left, untouched until it's done. That allows the dye to sit in the folds and creases and those lovely hard lines happen. As you can see, it's also possible to preserve quite pale areas alongside very dark ones. Yum. 

One tip when dyeing fabric - use decent fabric. Dye is quite expensive so you don't want to waste it, and your efforts on cheap and nasty fabric. I favour either cotton poplin or sateen, mercerised will afford you deeper more lustrous colours without requiring any more dye.

I've cut up everything from this latest dyeing session and we've packed them as rolls of assorted sizes and shapes of loveliness! They'll be available at a bargain price on our stand ZL15 at Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch from Thursday. 

Hope to see you there. 

Laura

x