Glass Challenge

I've been doing a bit more with beading lately. Currently I have some chokers, bracelets and earings on display at the Neighbourhood House to promote an upcoming beginners class. Enter Liz. Liz is a glass artist: would I like to have a go at making some jewellery with the glass beads she makes? Last night I went over for a visit. I got to see her set up and started to wrap my head around some of the ways glass is crafted. It was intriguing to see the differences and similarities to the way I work with my dyes and fibres. I brought home a few of her lovely beads to work with. The challenge is for me to work with a particular bead that already has something to say in its own right. I want to respect and enjoy that in the setting I find for it. Also the beads are all one-offs. I'm used to having as many of the same sort of bead as I like to use. At the bead shop I can buy anything from one to one hundred of the same bead. I'm looking for ways of combining several unique beads without detracting from their individuality. I also have the opportunity to suggest styles or colours of beads I'd like to work with. It's all quite exciting. Meanwhile these beads are sitting on my table so I can get to know them better. Oh, and don't imagine that there's nothing else on that table! I haven't quite finished with my procion dyes and then there's my labelling kit for my Folio samples, plus various other sundry items.

Big Day Out

Yesterday was my Big Day Out. No, not the one with the Big Noise bands and even bigger crowds. I took a day out to enjoy some country air and the company of fellow fibre lovers. Charly at Ixchel hosts a monthly Spin In. I've been keen to go. Yesterday, with my new car running and a day free of other commitments, I was able to get there. It's quite a drive from my end of town, but with views like this, well worth the effort. I didn't do much spinning: what with sitting quietly out on the veranda waiting for the brightly coloured finches to return to the feeding station; watching a bunny haircut; getting to know Jazz, the gentle bunny-dog and choosing a personalised bag or two of delicious silky angora fibre to accompany me home--the day went much too quickly. I'd like to be able to say that I was satisfied with the fresh country air and rain water, but in fact there were several substantial cakes to keep us going--including an incredible Lavender cake. Imagine biting into a soft buttery tea cake and finding yourself enveloped in the experience of lavender!

Next month Charly will be at the Bendigo show, but there will be another Spin In in August. I'm hoping to be there. Meanwhile I have 50g of beautiful bunny fluff from the silver-haired Dash to work with and folder full of photos to enjoy.

Improvising

I've got to the whatever! stage in my cotton dyeing. This is the stage where the dyes are ageing, so I'm not sure how they're going to behave. At the same time, I'm getting overtired and more willing to just see what happens than usual. You could say that I too am ageing and not sure how I'm going to behave! Nothing too wild just now, but this skein has been fascinating me for a couple of days: To give you the orientation: we have a skein of cotton in a white icecream bucket. The skein is draped over a plastic chopstick which is resting on the edges of the bucket. Both ends of the skein are dangling in a pool of dye. The skein was soaked in some soda ash solution which had just a hint of the fuscia colour in it--just because that was the only soda ash I had mixed up at the time. The dye bath is a combination of the fuscia and warm blue and the resulting purple colour was not unexpected. From memory, I set this up one morning and then headed out to do something else. When I came home I found the blue was creeping up out of the dye bath into the upper part of the skein. It was less than a centimetre or so of the blue at that stage, but I decided to just let it go. Well, the blue just kept slowly creeping up, until the two edges met. Now I have the blue-purple combo you can see in the pic. I haven't rinsed it yet, so I have no idea how much of the colour will wash out and how much will stay. And I have no idea why the blue dye chose to go travelling and leave the fuscia colour behind.

Theoretically procion dyes lose their reactivity after 5 hours or so of being combined with soda ash solution, but I've found that they often maintain a bit of life well beyond that point. In this case there's no real risk of failure. Any degree of blue, pink or pale purple will be a nice contrast to the more intense colour of the rest of this skein. Even white would be ok. And I can always re-dye part of the skein if I don't like the result. I've got a lovely day of outings planned, so I'm not going to rinse it now. I'll just leave it for another day and wait for the surprise.

Restoration Process

A couple of Christmasses ago I made a doona (continental quilt) cover for a young friend. The front was pieced with several coordinating fabrics and the back was hand dyed to match. It was a hit and we spent some fun time making matching cushion covers. A couple of months ago, this treasured piece suffered a sad fate. It was in the wash-basket and caught the attention of a young cattle dog. The dog dragged it out into the yard and tackled it with his teeth and paws. You can imagine how unhappy J was when she found it some time later. Then came the inevitable, hard question: can it be fixed? The front had several small holes, which can probably be mended, but the back was the worst area of injury, with a huge gaping hole.

Just to complicate matters, the friend and her doona cover are in South East Queensland and I'm in Melbourne. After several phone consultations with her Mum, we decided to replace the whole back. That means dyeing a piece to match. It was so badly torn that ripping out a piece to send me as a sample was easy. It arrived in the mail yesterday. Meanwhile, I'd been searching for a suitable piece of cotton fabric. The store where I bought the original piece no longer stocks sheeting width cotton in the dress department where craft fabrics are kept. The assistants there suggested I try furnishings. They have sheeting fabric, but it's poly-cotton, not what I want for dyeing. "What about homewares? They might have a large cotton sheet you could use". No, homewares don't have 100% cotton sheets other than in a top-of-the-range sheet set which was beyond my budget.

I tried my dye suppliers, who sent me a lovely sample of sheeting width cotton, but then went off the air for several days last week. I have procion dyes mixed up right now ready to use, so the delay was just frustrating. In desperation yesterday I tried one of my favourite quilting stores. They had a bleached calico which looks ok. I brought it home last night and put it straight into the washing machine to wash out the sizing. This morning it's in the dye bath. I added the colour in several batches to give the interesting texture I'm after. The timer's just gone off to remind me to add the soda ash solution which will help to set the dye. By this evening I should have the job done. It will take quite a bit of rinsing, since it's such a large piece. Then it will go into the mail, back to Queensland to be stitched into the back of the restored doona cover. Woah, I bet that dog has no idea how much trouble he caused!

Painted Skein

OK, so the house is still awash with procion dyes: dyes in the kitchen-living room, dyes in the bathroom . . . so far I've managed to keep them out of my bedroom. Yesterday I used up the last of the thickened dye from last week. By mixing up the dye powder with an alginate thickener, I get to work with something the consistency of poster paint. I found this just a little too thick to really cover the cotton yarn, especially when it's dry, so I've been experimenting with adding dye solution to the mix. Here's yesterday's effort: This is a real improvisation. I've used some thickened dyes and some straight from the dye pot, and I pretty much decided on the colours as I went along, depending on what I had left in front of me. I'll be interested to see how the colours come out when rinsed. I'm thinking some of them may be quite pale, since the thickened dyes are over a week old. The intense colour you can see in the pic is unrinsed. I'll leave it another 24 hours to give the thickened dyes the best chance of reacting, then I'll see what I get.

Colour Me, Baby!

This crib sheet was pale pink a couple of days ago. Not any more:I tied it up with lots of little elastic bands, then dyed it in a fuscia colour. After a while I lifted it out, added a warm blue to the bucket and then dropped it back in again. Now it's soaking in the sink. It will take a while to finish rinsing. You guessed it, I still have procion dyes all over the house. I'm making slow progress on the conflicting tasks of using them up and cleaning up. I'll continue walking that particular tightrope today. My beading class has been potsponed again, so I have the day at home. I can cope with a fair bit of mess around the place as long as there's room to move. So, I'll work on that today. Meanwhile, the rinsing continues.

Dip, Dip, Drip

I spent most of yesterday pottering around with my leftover dyes. Since I was mainly dyeing t-shirts there were buckets all over the floor. Not so good for my back, but I don't have the bench space to do it any differently.

Here are two buckets which I'd already used for a couple of t-shirts. Scarlet on the right, fuscia on the left. I draped a skein of cotton between the two to see how it would dye.
I rinsed this skein out this morning and it's very pale, in a pretty delicate way. It's currently in the sink, as are various t-shirts in various stages of rinsing. Sometime soon I'll have to reclaim a bit more of my house and do some cleaning, but there's still plenty of colour in jars to keep me going for a while.