Sisters three thread dye session...

Well after four marvellous days at the Festival of Quilts back home with my sisters for company and caught up with some thread dyeing.

My sister Sue, cannot get a decent range of threads when she lives in Andalucia so we decided to produce a range of plain and varigated threads in a range of weights for her to take back with her.

We stranded a selection of white cottons, linen and some silk threads, soaked them in soda ash, drained the soda ash off then added concentrated procion dyes to the thread trays.

We left them to 'cure' overnight then rinsed until clear - it always surprises me that using this method seems to take up all the pigment - very little dye rinses out.  First dried on old towelling then pegged outside to dry. Pleasing result, bright clear colours - but did discover some 'cotton ' perle sold at the FOQ did not take the dye - a little burn test later showed it was some polyester mix thread.

very tiny dyeing,

I will introduce myself next, I am Tina Rose from the sweetypie50 blog and here is some very tiny dyeing, and quite a lot of stitching.

the word TEA is stencilled onto the fabric, stitched round and then painted in with walnut ink,you can make the ink by putting a few granules of dried walnut ink[ from artvan go] into a small bottle and mixing with water,
it gives a lovely brown  aged look, much nicer than tea,

so there you are, very very tiny dyeing.

What a way to spend an afternoon

Just  came in from the garden and found a message on my phone – my pal in the village had made up a pot of indigo which she was using to dye her Shibori work and there was life left in the pot, she had not exhausted all the dye. Did I want to come and drop in some fabric to use up the dye? As if there was something I would rather do ……............
Two hours later I brought home a bag of dripping wet fabric to hang on the line. I had slowly lowered a selection of different fabric types and weights into the deep green murky liquid and pulled out vibrant green fabric which I watched like magic, turn to blue as the oxygen in the air converted the cloth to an indigo colour.  

When I get around to doing something with the fabric I will post the results.

Jean

hello from Jean, Julie, Tina and Wendy

4 old dears up to their armpits in dye.  Not really.  We are not old.  We are not dear and we tend to squish our fabric into jars and bottles and then pour the dye on.  I am sure there will be pics to follow soon