colours from the dye pot

 

There's been a bit of dying and pot boiling this past week. Mainly experiments with blown eggs, for Easter - mainly as fun activities with the kids.
I threw some fabric scraps into the left over dye water; just to see what would result.

I used some silk scraps left over from the workshop. And some pieces of my hemp + organic cotton. 

I'm really excited by of the results. Some were not so exciting - but easy enough to dye over.

All have been washed, but not, as you can see, been ironed. They've been sitting around for a few days now, and some fading has happened. I'll have to test this a bit more. 

Beetroot resulted in the pink colour. {bottom photos}

Red Cabbage gave the purplish colour. {bottom photos}

The skins of mangosteen gave a more faded sort of pinkish hue - seemed to work better on the hemp than on the silk. {top two photos}

No mordants or anything used, as I'm just at the stages of trialling small pots in my kitchen and not wanting to have a whole lot of things boiling.

planning, gathering, collecting........

.......... collating. That's the hard one. Collating it - getting it all to come together, as one cohesive unit. Or even at one time. One stitch joined with all the others, rather than all these random stitches and lines and shapes and colours and ideas in my head. 

I have a market stall booked in for the end of April. Haven't done any markets since Christmas. And really, I didn't want to be doing any more (unless they were really big designer ones). But things didn't go as planned earlier this year, and life, work, thoughts, ideas, wishes, hopes, dreams shifted. And I had to change. 

Oh. 

I had to change. 

That's the hard one.

So, I aim to have a new range to launch at the Bris-Style Indie Twilight Market on Friday 30th April, 2010. Details will follow at a later stage; for now, if you live in or near Brisbane, mark that date into your diaries.

I aim to have many pieces that are OOAK, or at least very limited edition run. At this moment  in my self, I don't want to be making lots and lots of the one things over and over again. I want, I need, some difference. Something new, something else. 

Something that doesn't matter if it doesn't have a twin, or matching almost-look-alike sibling. Perhaps it will be a sibling, but with quite distinct personalities. So you can look and tell that they are related; yet you can look and tell that they are so very different. And you love them both for totally different reasons. Or maybe the same reason.

Things Sam + I are planning ::

>new cushion covers : something very different to our others. just you wait and see

>lots of little zippered purses : all a bit different to each other, no two exactly the same

>some special one-off pieces of skate jewellery

>perhaps a new bag design, or two : depending on how much quiet time I get during the school holidays to get any work done

>some very special, meaningful pieces of fabric and stitches 

>some other little pieces : if, when, how, why : things we make just because we want to : just because we can : just because we could

Can you wait? You'll have to. Perhaps some photos next week. Some snippets of new things slowly showing themselves. 

Until then, I'm still collating. And collecting. And finding inspiration. All. Over. The. Place.


** Image is a paprika dyed cotton doily that was in my stash. We've been doing egg dying, using natural colourings, and I wanted to use up some of the left over dye water. More similar experiments are currently happening in the kitchen. {Note - boiling paprika is quite smelly, do it when your family is not at home; just to keep them a tiny bit happy with all your witches pots brewing in the house!}