Cleaning, Dyeing and Other Things

I posted a pic of my two latest loves, bird feeders. I love watching the hummingbirds and the finches feed. I have a male cardinal, who has been happy munching my grapes, who has no feathers on his head. It's due to mites from what I've been told, his crown is starting to grow back in, but he does look plum silly.

It started with a mess on the laundry room floor, and I must be nuts. Because next thing I know we've mopped half of the room, which is now drying and am cleaning everything in site. The laundry room is approximately one third of the basement, and it's a bear to clean, so I really try to advoid cleaning it if I can. Well today is it's lucky day I guess. Once half of it is dry we'll move everything to the other side of the room and wash it down. That's just the tip of the iceberg, as they say6, I have two deep freezers, one chest, one upright, and an "all" refridgerator in that room that need to be cleaned and/or defrosted and cleaned. I'm just a barrel of fun ;-0

I put the ugly shirt into the cochineal bath, it's coming out a lovely purple color, kinda blotchy which I like. I'm planning to go over it with the Shiva Paintstiks when I'm done with the dyeing process. It's a good piece to play with and see how far I can push the surface.

Speaking of pushing I found out that yes you can use the Shiva Paintstiks on fabric first and then dye, the fabric, with indigo. The indigo did not harm the paint on the fabric, I was quite pleased this worked.

Mittens

I chose McCall's pattern M4683, and Simplicity 4780 for mitten patterns. JoAnns didn't have a Green Pepper mitten pattern, so I'll have to wait. I did buy GP's F858 Frenchglen Barn Jacket Pattern. The whole fabric overdyeing experience has convinced me that I can make some gorgeous garments out of my hand-dyeds.

I'm planning to make a jacket out of my compost dyed fabrics using McCall's 3254. Well I cut the fabric out, but don't like it now. So I'm planning to put the garment together, probably next week, and then overdye it, starting with indigo. I don't want to lose the composted marks, but the jacket needs help! It's a coat dress actually but I want to use it as a jacket over light weight pants and a tank. I'm going to have to cut hte fabric for the sleeves now though, I had planned to wear it over a tee shirt, hmmmmmm that is still an option.

On the schedule for today is fabric dyeing, lots and lots of wool fabric. Fabric sales have been great, so much so I ran out of fabric. I'm planning on washing porky quills while the fabric is cooking. I want that same purple on the quills that I got yesterday on the cotton yarns. I might be able to do this, blue and red have been easy so far, except on one batch of quills that wouldn't take any dye at all. Yellow however has been a bear to get.

There's been a plane circling over our house all afternoon, I wish it would go find a place to land it's annoying. I keep expecting it to crash land somewhere.

Ugly Shirt Again


Here's a pic of the shirt in the indigo vat. I washed it in the washer first, then dyed it, 5 dips, it'll be kind of mottled. The shirt has some intesting tones to it, but I still want to put it in the cochineal vat to see what happens. I'd like fewer yellow tones, so I'm going to try and pull the red out. It'll be pretty dark by th e time I'm done. But now I 'm thinking I have some white linen, about 5 yards worth, that I want to dye, I'm going to try for the purples that I got with the cotton yarn.

Dog Beds

I'll have to post pics later, but I'm making dog beds for the dogs. I'm using left over fabrics and old jeans that I"m planning to recycle, and we have quite a few jeans I can recycle at that. I will admit to wanting to be decadent with my sheltie, Angel, and buy some pink faux fur fabric and make her a swanky dog bed. But well I'm too practical, but I did pet the fur at JoAnns though.

Plus the little mutt loves her cheapy rag rug, that I bought at Wal Mart some ten years ago for a dollar. I wash is, hide it, she finds it and drags it back into her kennel. I'm hoping she'll like her new bed, I'll leave her her rag rug with the new bed, just in case.

Speaking of hte brat, today she finally started coming up to us, for affection, and didn't run off. It's been almost a year, about the 21st in fact, that we've had her, she was a rescue. Now to just get her house broken.

Dyeing and more Wool

FYI those are names I'm giving the colors of my natural dyed fibers, I did NOT use grapes or raspberries to dye with. The grape one is 3 dips in indigo with cochineal over dye. The raspberry one is 2 dips in indigo with cochineal overdye. That is cotton bias tape yarn that I dyed, and will have for sale soon. The Carnation pink is cochineal with cream of tartar. The raspberry wool is cochineal. Everything has an alum mordant.

Ditto for the wool felted fabric. I'm debating whether to turn this lovely fabric into a vest, or into a tote. I'm leaning towards a vest. I like the pink color, it's me what can I say. I just need to find some fabric to line the vest with, I have a wool woolrich vest that is line with some sort of faux sherling material. It has a zippered front which I like a lot, and is a dark charcoal grey. I bought it at the woolrich outlet store near duluth MN. But there are times when I want one that is a bit more girlish, but unfortunately I'm a large woman and most of the feminine woolrich clothes are mockingly small! I mean who picked that size range anyway, their xl is a small, if you ask me.

I felted 5 wool sweaters and a wool vest this afternoon. I'll take pics later, before I cut them apart. Right now I"m off to run errands, later I'll be cutting my pieces apart for some wild and wooly mittens. I may do some small knitted patches that I'll felt to add to my collection, since I can't find colors I am wanting.

Oh and the beige sweater fit me so I'm planning to dye it and use if for myself!!! That was the first question hubby asked me was if any of them fit me, of the ones I felted, nope they were all smalls and mediums, otherwise I would have kept them too.