This & that..........

 I've been doing more ice-dyeing...….it's stacking up waiting for me to do the photography work. I also bought some socks from Dharma to ice-dye. Here are two pair above the ice-dyed rayon/silk devore scarves. They take the dye so well - I love them.  Today I have a batch of 8 pair of socks ice-dyeing along with cotton fabric underneath them to be dyed for whatever projects may come along, mostly probably quilting projects.

 It's that time of year again to make gift bags.  I leave them out on my table to work on here and there when I have a bit of spare time.  I generally take my own bags when grocery shopping but occasionally I open the back of the car and there aren't any in there......so I save the bags to recycle. I wonder if Trader Joe's ever thought this would happen to their bags when they printed 'reusable recyclable' on them.

 Here's one of the finished bags, this is the larger size.  Yes, they aren't beautiful holiday gift bags but I like them. I do still have to hit up the Dollar Store every once in a while when I run out of my homemade bags.

Here are the cows this morning, from left to right - Gwinevere, Stan, Ollie and Moo Latte.  They are not actually staring at me, they're staring at the guy on the roof trying to pull the chimney stack out. Today the new gas fireplace install is happening although we're in a holding pattern waiting for the gas company to arrive to shut off the gas as these guys aren't allowed to touch the main shut off and we don't have a secondary one outside.  Back to the cows. It looks like the piece of property behind us has sold and there will be houses built - it's going to be a sad day when I no longer get to see and talk to the cow gang...…….and I instead hear construction work going on and have houses behind us.

Bits and bobs.........

 I just listed some more ice dyed silk scarves in my etsy shop. I've got some silk shawls 'marinating' now.....will rinse them out tomorrow and eventually get them photographed when I have time. Then I'm done with scarf/shawl dyeing for the year. Out of the recent dyeing I have set aside 3 scarves for myself - can't wait for cooler weather to start wearing them as it's still summer here.

 I went to a quilt show over on the coast last weekend. It was a small show but very nice. This was my favorite quilt in the show. It's hard to tell in the photo but all those circles are yo-yo's. I love yo-yo's. I can remember my grandmother showing me how to make them when I was very young. I've wanted to do a project using them one day.......perhaps that day/year won't be terribly far in the future.

This was another quilt I loved. It won best of show at the  Coos County Fair and had a second place ribbon from the State Fair. I can see why, it's a wonderful quilt.

More silk scarves........

More ice-dyed silk scarves available in my shop

Golf wiffle balls and ice dyeing

Yesterday I tried out something new on two of the silk scarves to be ice dyed. I confiscated 2 packages of golf wiffle balls from the golfer in the house as he doesn't use them for practice.  I then wrapped the scarf over the balls and rubber banded them in place.

Here they are piled with ice and fiber reactive dye.

Here's what they looked like this morning before I patiently removed all the rubber bands and wiffle balls before rinsing the scarves. 

And here are those two scarves.  Kind of a neat effect although looks a little tie dye to me. Will I do this again? Not sure. I know I keep seeing more and more tie dye but not sure that's what I want to dye..........although I do think these are really interesting looking.

The 8 scarves dyed yesterday will be listed in my etsy shop as soon as I have time to edit the photos. Sitting up the ice at the moment are 3 silk shawls and a wound warp of a cotton/rayon blend. Not sure how any of these will turn out - all are experiments that will be rinsed out sometime tomorrow.

Ice dyeing

 Yesterday morning I washed out the first batch of ice-dyed silk scarves - love how they turned out.......except for the yellow one on the end. It's just a bit too yellow and people are afraid of yellow.  That one will get over-dyed sometime this week.

I set up 8 more scarves with ice and dye yesterday morning, look at the colors in this one. I started with turquoise and terra cotta - look at how the dyes break and create even more colors. I'll be heading outside shortly to wash out yesterday's scarves - will be a fun surprise to see what I got. I've got 8 more scarves to set up to dye today.........two of them I'm using a fun technique...........photo later. Hopefully will get a warp wound today to try this dye technique out on a warp - will either be very interesting or a big mottled mess which is why the warp will only be for one scarf for this experiment.

Ice dyeing

 It's that time of year again - time to play with ice dyeing. This morning I set up the tables and dye stuffs and painted (with dyes) a knitted blank to use for a warp (hope it turns out) and set up ice dyeing for 8 silk scarves. It's so warm the ice is melting pretty fast.

You can see the silk scarf peaking through in this photo - it's looking like it will be a beautiful scarf.  Always such a surprise to see what I've got the next day when I rinse the scarves out and hang them to dry. I've got more scarves and some shawls to dye, haven't decided if the shawls will be ice dyed or if I'll paint the dyes on like I usually do.  I'm also going to wind a warp and see how that turns out ice dyed - it could turn out incredible or a mottled mess. Will get to that in the next week.

Ice-Dyed Silk Scarves

So far I've gotten 12 of the ice dyed silk scarves photographed......more to come soon.......and all those silk devore shawls too.......too much to get done, too few hours in the day. These are all available in my etsy shop now.  There are a couple I'm really tempted to keep for myself........giving it thought........

Dyeing.........

I decided to do a little dyeing. here's where I've got some ice dyeing going - there are silk scarves (first soaked in soda ash) hidden under those piles of ice, then fiber reactive dye powder sprinkled over top the ice, then they sit there overnight to batch. I bought some frames at the Salvation Army, took the glass out and had Sam staple some leftover screen from another project in them.

 I love the designs created with the dye as the ice melts

 Look at these squiggly designs

 

 Here are the 4 scarves rinsed out this morning hanging to dry - they take no time to rinse and dry

 Here's a close up - I find the designs created with the ice dyeing fascinating

 And here they are dried and ironed

And here are the silk/rayon devore shawls I dyed yesterday - these took forever to rinse the leftover/excess dye out of.

 This little lizard came to watch me today - good thing he was up on the fence rail out of Bailey's range who loves to chase the lizards - never caught one but it's a great activity.

 And this dragonfly kept lighting on my drying rack and let me get really close

Here's a beauty head shot. This one had a buddy that looked to be blue and grey but it would never stop so I could get a picture of it.

I've got some more scarves sitting under the ice and dye - the great reveal tomorrow after they're washed out. After that I've got 12 more scarves to ice dye but alas I've only got 4 frames at the moment so it will take a few days to finish up.

Silk Scarves

The silk scarves and shawls all had their photos taken yesterday and are now listed in my etsy shop in the silk scarf/shawl section. Phew, what a job to get a handful of somewhat decent photos of each scarf/shawl.....not my strong suit. Kept a couple out for myself so numerous less photos to deal with.

Ice Dyeing

Here are the 4 scarves ice-dyed yesterday. Carol's are on top - they're stunning.  Mine are on the bottom. My red/orange one dried much lighter and is a coral color now. Lesson learned on that one - if you use a primary color dye, like red, it's going to dominate the scarf where as with other color dyes they are really mixtures of colors so when they ice dye they separate - much more interesting. What doesn't show up in this photo is what the scarves look like close-up - reminds me of marbled paper. We're hoping for snow this winter to try snow dyeing.

One of the chores on the to-do list now is photography of all the scarves dyed this past week - what a time sucker that will be....but first back to working on gifts.......

Ice dyeing

This afternoon neighbor Carol and I did some ice dyeing. Can't wait to see how the scarves turn out after we rinse them tomorrow. Technique is to soak the scarves in soda ash, pile up on some sort of screen (over a bucket to catch the dye drips), pile ice on top, sprinkle with fiber reactive dye and let sit until tomorrow afternoon. The ice was already melting giving us a peek at what's to come.

My first scarf I used bronze and pagoda red - it's hard to see in this picture but the scarf has a very nice autumnal look.

My second scarf I used chartreuse, one of my favorite colors, and indigo - looks like there will be quite a bit of green in this scarf from them mixing.

Unfortunately I can't remember the exact names of the dyes Carol used but this one is one of the grays and I think lilac. It's going to be a stunner.

Carol used the same gray on this plus I think marine but not positive of the color name of the blue.

 

Stay tuned to tomorrow to see the results. I've also got a long sleeve asymmetrical tee from Dharma to dye but just couldn't decide what colors so that will be another day.

 

 

 

 

A day of dyeing..........

Friend Pat and I had a day of dyeing silk scarves and shawls. First they're washed, then soaked in soda ash, then fiber reactive dyes are applied, wrapped in plastic and they sit overnight to batch. The next day is rinse, rinse, rinse as fiber reactive dyes don't exhaust. I haven't see Pat's scarves yet as she took them home to batch and then rinse.

How's this for dramatic???

 

The shawls I had to dye have a burnout design on them - they're silk and rayon. I fell in love with the amethyst and blue wisteria dyes.

They take only 5 minutes to dry in this heat. Yes, we are back to summer, hot and dry, news tonight said the drought will be intensified through the end of the year - we were teased by that couple days of rain and cool weather......at least it got the fires contained.......but if we don't start getting fall rains fire season will never end.

How did I get so many scarves in these colors???  Some scarves will have a little surface design added to them using Shiva Paintstiks with stencils or rubbing plates.  It's hard to see in this picture but a couple of these scarves have very subtle color changes in them.

Here are a couple shawls - I was going for the ombre effect.

Love these rich colors

Very pretty

This looks weird in the photo but it's really pretty in person - nice autumn tones

I love the dramatic color change here

 

And here's that Blue Wisteria and Amethyst shawl again - love it

 

Next up was ice dyeing - we've never done it before so it was a learning experience

 

After the scarf is washed and soaked in soda ash it's put on a grid over a pan.,,,emphasis the pan or bucket as all that dye will be dripping off as the ice melts.  A screen would work better but I have tons of these grid pieces from my roving booth display so that's what I was using.....didn't want to go out and buy screening.

Pile the ice on high

 



Sprinkle the dye powder on top.  This is one of mine and I put too much  dye powder

This blue lavender one is Pat's - she put less dye powder which was better, as I said a learning experience.....I think perfect would be a tinge more dye than Pat used.

This is what they looked like the next morning after the ice all melted

And here are the finished ice dyed items. I should have taken close-ups because the patterning is incredible.  My favorites are Pat's blue lavender scarf and her silk top - she hasn't seen them yet as they had to stay here for the ice to melt. It's hard to tell in this photo but the designs the dye makes while the ice melts are stunning.

I've always been under the impression that the fiber reactive dyes are best used in 70 degree temps or warmer, while dyeing and while batching. So, how does ice dyeing work then??? Does anyone know?  And apparently it can be done in the snow too.

On a different subject - the van - we heard back from Dodge today and they're sending us a check for $500 of the $750 alternator repair - whoo hoo. Our position that it should have never happened to a vehicle less than 3 years old, 3000 miles out of warranty was justified.