Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The Dyeing Season has Begun






Sio wanted to go up to Woodfield last night to Blicks Arts and Crafts, they were having a clearance sale. She doesn't like to drive on the expressway, so John said he'd take her. I went along and broke my nothing new rule to buy dyes. I knew I was going to buy them eventually, I had originally planned on buying them from Dharma Trading and having them shipped, but this was ok. There will be some things I need that I will have to buy new, underwear is one, dyes are another. I will continue to look for plants I can use, actually I'm kind of anxious to try the natural dyes on some of the hemp fabric I have, but here in Northern Illinois there aren't any plants to look for yet. It's been warm but only for the last couple of days. I'm figuring in April I can start again. This year I'm going to try mulberries, I know where 2 trees are.

That being said, I dyed a 3/4 yd. piece of hemp a pretty turquoise. I put in a bit of fuschia to tone it down a bit, and after it was dyed I threw in a hemp scrap and some cotton scraps. I left them all in for various lengths of time, the hemp scrap is the greenish one. I'm pretty happy with the results, and I'll probably use the big piece of hemp for another top. The small pieces will go in the scrap bag. They are all still damp in the pictures. I'm also posting pictures of Albert, he's such a handsome fellow.

1 comment:

Melissa Gasparotto said...

Albert is so cute!