I’ve been tagged…again.

I’ve been tagged again and so in the spirit of the game I’ll list six unimportant things about myself but since most of the people I know have been tagged I won’t bother tagging anyone else (sorry if this isn’t part of it).

1. I’m a sweet freak, love my chocolate, cookies, icecream etc, etc.

2. I’m a horder to a degree. I love buying fabric, yarn and craft goodies that someday I may make into something, I do use some of the stuff (honest).

3. I listen to Triple M Sydney radio through the Internet even though I live in Ontario, Canada. I love the music mix they have and their music appeals to me more than the North American stuff. LOL, I can sing along to all the commercials.

4. I’m mostly a homebody. Travelling is great but I like being at home. My husband loves the cruises we’ve been on so probably more of those are in our future.

5. I have a cat named Nicky who is an orange and white tabby. He’s about 15 years old and although he looks to be in great shape the poor old guy doesn’t move like he used to. I look at him and see myself as I hobble around with my stiff back, we’re both getting older.

6. I have a fantastic husband whom I love very much (along with four grown kids). He’s very…well I was going to list all the great things about him but it’d probably be to mushy and sentimental and take up a lot of space (as if this sentence isn’t) so I’ll leave it at that.

Karen

Tie-dye…the results…

Okay, I posted the dyed shirts the other day but not how they looked finished so here are the finished results…ta dah!

Mandala Tapistry- there are several ways to tie a mandala, this one is from Tom and Martine’s DVD series “Tie Dye 101″ and “Advanced Tie Dye Techniques”. I used the same colour-way as they did (well not the exact same colours but the same colour families) and realised afterwards that I’d done a shirt in these colours, oh well next time I’ll try something different.

Multi-coloured Vee

Multi-coloured Vee, these shirts were also from the above DVD series.

Rainbow center spiral

Off-center spiral, colour-way idea from the above DVD but using a red I personally created from one of my fabric swaps…I’m so proud

Center spiral stained glass shirt using the left-over dye from my last colour wheel

Spider spiral, have to admit that afterwards I realised that maybe I should have reversed the red and black so I’d have a black spider instead of a red one, oh well.

Rubber band resist with the left-over colour wheel dyes only a full yard piece.

Heart shirt

Off-center spiral

After an exhausting two days of work I’ve grown tired of tie-dyes once again. I will never do this for a business as it’s simply not work the effort for me. Aside from which people where I live will simply not buy tie-dye. I guess we are ultra conservative or what not. I sold one of the above shirts to a young girl that is a fan. The rest will have to do for gifts or I’ll save them for the next church function and maybe hope to sell another…one by one…, lol.

Karen

Tie-Dyeing

I’ve been busy the last couple of days trying to get some shirts ready for our church garage sale tomorrow. The only problem is I was so busy with the garden these past couple of weeks I didn’t start early enough. I’ve got a few done but haven’t washed them out yet. Could be a problem as the sale starts tomorrow at 8:00 am and I have a very strong feeling I “won’t” be up washing shirts at six in the morning. Oh well, we’ll see how many get done.

Meanwhile some pictures of tied and dyed shirts so people can play a guessing game as to what they really look like.

Tie dye #1

Tie dye #2

Tie dye #3

Tie dye #4

Tie dye #5

Tie dye #6

Tie dye #7

In case you’re thinking that some of the above pictures look the same you’re right but the items are all different. I’ve posted all of the dyed items I did below.

Dyed item #1

Dyed item #2

Dyed item #3

Dyed item #4

Dyed item #5

Dyed item #6

Dyed item #7

Dyed items #8, #9, #10

Here’s to hoping the washout is a success and everything turns out. I’ll post pictures tomorrow of the laundered items.

Karen

Jewel-toned Colour Wheel

Yesterday I did a six-step colour wheel for a swap I’m doing for one of my fabric dyeing forums; the colours – ProChem’s sapphire blue, boysenberry and Dharma’s Golden Yellow (MX-GR). This is one of those times that seeing the material is better than looking at the photo as the colours were intense jewel tones, very nice!

Six-step colour wheel using Sapphire, Boysenberry and Golden Yellow. The purple on top of the sapphire blue is a very nice purple but the camera shows it as a blue, something my camera tends to do.

Aside from doing the spiral tutorial yesterday I also decided to play with the last fat eighth piece and accordian fold it and tie it off with some rubber bands for some white resists in the piece.

Fat eighth pleated accordian style.

Rubber band resists.

Dyeing the folds.

Covering the fabric to prevent dyes from drying out while the fabric batches 24 hours.

Its always great fun to open up the fabric/shirts the next day and imagine what you’ve ended up with.

Eeek, what is this mess?

Well this one looks better at least.

After the wash-out, dried and ironed.

Not bad for throwing it together quickly.

Hmm…could be a method to use for the upcoming resist swap.

A lot of the dye washes out so sometimes the pieces that look the worse when you unfold them actually end up being the best ones after some washing. The little flecks in the swirl were caused by trapped air bubbles in the wet cloth.

Karen

Swirl tutorial – The Quick and Easy Method

I showed some of these swirls in an earlier post and people asked me how to do them. I have to admit that I didn’t think up this method on my own, the idea came from my friend Margo who abides in the same fabric-dyeing forum I belong to.

Typically in tie dyeing you take your shirt and pinch it in the middle (or where ever) with either a clothspeg or fork and then start to twist the material around the object holding the cloth. After you’ve gathered all of the material you tightly bind the fabric with twine or elastics and then dye it.

For this method you do the same thing but instead of binding off the material you just plop it into a bowl or container and then dye it. It’s a more relaxed way of doing the same thing. Personally I don’t think the swirl is quite as defined as the first method but for the amount of effort involved its great. I wouldn’t recommend using this method on a large amount of material rather we’re working with about 12″-14″ square here. (Having said that I used a left-over scrap of a fat-eighth so mine won’t be exactly circular when it’s washed out.)

Piece of soda-soaked fabric ready to swirl.

Fabric being pinched in middle.

Starting to twist material around clothpeg.

Keep twisting adjusting folds into smaller pleats as necessary.

Finished swirl.

Plop into small bowl.

Hair dye bottles with MX dye.

Applying boysenberry dye in pie-shaped wedges.

Filling in the other spaces with sapphire blue.

Flipping over swirl.

Applying dye to the other side.

Transferring swirl to clean bowl to prevent fabric from getting soggy with collected dye in bottom of bowl.

Personally I didn’t feel I’d applied enough dye to the first side so I flipped over the swirl and added a bit more dye over top the areas already dyed. I wiped up the extra dye in the bottom of the container after doing this to prevent the colours muddying.

Final step covering the bowl to let the swirl batch for 24 hours before the wash-out.

And that’s all there is to it. I’ll have to see how it turns out tomorrow when I wash it out. I might point out that there are different ways of dyeing the swirls. I was going to keep it simple and just dye with two colours in which case I would have applied the same colour of dye to the corresponding pie shaped wedges on the back. My problem was I grabbed the yellow instead of the boysenberry. So since I grabbed the wrong colour I decided to dye the whole back area yellow. What should happen is that I’ll get yellow stripes in between the red and blue. It’s a small piece of fabric so we’ll see how it turns out. If you’ve ever seen a rainbow swirled tie-dye with black stripes in between the colours you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Karen

Almost done…

Well I’ve been very busy this past week working on gardening. I’m almost done as today (hopefully) will see the last of the beds dug and some tubers planted – big leafy things – the name of which I can’t remember but I’ll be sure to post a picture when they’re up.

I planted red geraniums and yellow marigolds in the front bed. I also planted some purple flowers that I haven’t a clue what they are. They look like a cross between a daisy and a chrysanthemum. The hubby and I had put in some mulch, it’s a bit too orange for my taste but hopefully it will fade as the summer progresses. The front is very colourful at the moment. The side of the house it is very hot and receives little rain so I put in some portulagas since those flowers do well in hot sun.

Yesterday I finished planting the containers on the deck with marigolds, impatiens, alyssum and another small trailing purple flower whose name eludes me at the moment. I then spruced up the two beds in front of the deck and finished planting the rest of the leftover flowers.

Ivy geranium, a very different looking one at least to me.

I worked on helping my husband build the frame for a new raised bed. I stained/painted the boards, which was a new experience for me because I’ve never worked with stain before and it runs very easily but since this is only for the garden its no big deal if there are a few unsightly blobs.

Raised bed square and leveled in the garden ready for planting.

I’m hoping to get three more of these raised beds installed and then goodbye to massive turnings of soil in the spring and hopefully less sore backs from extreme stooping and bending. The new bed is about half garden soil and half new soil – black earth, peat moss mix and manure from the nursery so it should be a lot easier to work with and provide more nutrients for the plants.

Karen

Buttons and more…

My buttons finally arrived from Buttons Galore. They are cute but I’m not too sure about the quality so we’ll see how they work out. I ordered these online to match the oven towels that I made and then I ordered a few more. The price certainly was right so I can’t complain about that.

Various buttons from “Buttons Galore”

It’s really hard to find a site that carries a variety of buttons at a good price. Most of the sites I visited had buttons but at prices I would pay at a retailer so then you have to ask yourself why bother because then you are looking at shipping and handling in addition to your cost.

I did a couple of low-water immersion t-shirts for an upcoming garage sale the church is having in a couple of weeks. The youth group is travelling to Kenya this summer so they are trying to raise money by renting out table space at the garage sale. I have had the blank shirts sitting around forever so I’ve decided to make the effort and dye up the remaining shirts. Even if I don’t sell any I’ll have gotten them dyed so I’m ahead of the game, look for some more tie-dyes in the next couple of weeks on my blog.

Cerulean blue and Better Black LWI shirt.

Turquoise and Better Black LWI shirt.

With the little bit of dye leftover from the shirts I tossed it into a vase with a 1/2 yard piece of fabric to create a parfait.

Turquoise and Cerulean blue parfait.

I finally finished the beaded scarf a couple of days ago so thats one down and four more to go. I did work on the far back garden but have about 2/3’s of that to finish off. The soil is a dream back there because its the good rich soil from the overflow from the former millpond but its overgrown with lots of grass and weeds so its been a slow go what with my back. I worked on it on Monday and am just thinking of getting back to it today (Friday) although it has been raining during the week (my excuse).

Not much else doing around here except Spring cleanup and trying to get other stuff done. Hopefully the next post will be seeing some really neat tie-dyes.

Karen

Beaded scarf continued…

Well I finally finished one end of the scarf and got the main garden all turned over and dug up yeah! It’s been very rainy for the last couple of days so I’m going to have to wait until I start planting but that’s okay considering the tempratures have returned to what’s normal for spring and I really shouldn’t be planting at this point anyhow.

I remembered the beaded scarves as taking a long time to do but when I started I was optimistic but yes they do take a while to get done (I’ve only done the one end) so it’s going to be interesting to get five of these babies finished; good thing I’m starting now at the beginning of spring/summer instead of later.

One finished end of beaded scarf.

Close-up of beadwork.

That’s about all I have to post as I haven’t really done anything else aside from working outside and beading. I still lots of work left in that area so unless I get bored and do something else I’m afraid the blog is going to be a bit sparse in the coming weeks. Our church is having a garage sale and we can rent a table to sell stuff and I’ve been tempted that way thinking maybe some tie-dyes but there is so…much…to do around here it’s incredible. Everytime I turn around something else needs cleaning or doing. Oh well, such is life.

Karen