My hand dyeing adventure

Note before reading: this post is word heavy at the top and picture heavy at the bottom - I had not originally planned on doing a blog post about this but then decided that I wanted to share a whole load of photo's and this was the best place for it. If you don't want to read the how I did it stuff just skip to the bottom and enjoy the photo's.

Not so long ago I splurged and got myself a king sized wool filled 4 seasons duvet. My old one was also wool and 4 seasons but I'd previously been sold an extra long single person duvet and it's only because I am so short that it was "long enough", when used on it's side, to cover me. I had used this old duvet for years and just got tired of it being so short. A new duvet meant new duvet covers and while I found one that was okish I couldn't find another that I liked enough to buy.

So... A trip to IKEA got me a plain white duvet cover set, sheet and extra pillow cases as the duvet set only had 2 in it and I need 6. Then a trip to the shops got me 4 packs of Dylon dye - 2 in sunflower yellow and 2 in ocean blue. The plan was to tie dye the lot and have splashes of blue, yellow, green and white.  In the past I have always used the dye for the washing machine so doing it by hand was a new adventure. The old tins had always put me off as they were so complicated to use but these "new" packets are a lot more user friendly so I decided to take the plunge.

When I started the actual task of wrapping string around the corner of a pillow case, I soon realised it would take me a gazillion days to do so as my hands didn't like the job and it was also hard on my iffy shoulder. Those of you who don't know me won't know that I am the lucky recipient of palindromic rheumatism, arthritis, a dodgy back and some other joint issues thanks to working too hard so any task that requires repetitive movements is going to hit me hard. I decided that it would be a better idea to dip dye instead - easier on the hands etc. *wink*

After washing out the old baby bath I had lurking in my garage that my oldest had kindly carried up to the bathroom for me, I proceeded to mix up the first lot of dye - the yellow. The dye once mixed with water in the jug was a lovely orange and I was glad I didn't skimp on getting rubber gloves or I'd have had garish yellow/blue hands by the end of this. I then proceeded to ignore the instructions as what I had planned required more water so less dye per litre of water.  I knew in advance that this would result in a lighter colour.

This is why they say to use a bowl or stainless steel sink!

I half filled the baby bath with warm water, added the required salt and then the dye. As I had never dip dyed and I couldn't remember what order I had to do the dipping I decided to put it in to the half way point first and pull a bit out as time went by.  I squished the submerged fabric around for about 5 minutes - about 10 less than you are supposed to do as I didn't want a flat finish but splodges and blodges, just like you'd get with tie dyeing.

I draped the duvet and sheet over a plastic step so it would not lie on the floor. Doing it this way is messy - the dye tends to drip a bit if you don't squeeze any excess dye out first. Don't do it this way if you are not in a tiled area that is easy to clean. Once the last bit had been in the bath for around 45 minutes I took it out and did my best to rinse it out as much as possible, doing the pillow cases was easy but the sheet and duvet were a lot more difficult.

I spread the items on the tiled floor so the white undyed parts wouldn't get in contact with the dyed parts. I then poured the leftover dye into a tub and threw an old white sheet in that looked a bit grubby as it had gone slightly greyish and needed a bit more life added to it - I wasn't sure if this was going to have any effect but I knew that the sheet couldn't get any worse than it was already. I left that sheet to soak for a couple of hours.

Then it was time for the blue dye - even though the yellow dye had been orange seeing the purple that was the result of the packets of blue dye made me rather worried, especially when the first bit of white fabric into the bath turned lilac. I took a deep breath and decided to give it some time thinking that if the worst came to the worst nothing would happen that could not get fixed by a trip to the washing machine with a pack or 2 of black washing machine dye. This time round I was trying it the other way - slowly putting more fabric into the bath as time went by.

Like with the yellow dye I did my best to rinse out the blue dye but by this time my back had decided to play up and it was very painful to do so when the worst was off I decided to see if the washing machine could get the rest out.  I was thrilled with the results so far despite noticing that I'd not pushed the fabric in far enough to get a green area between the yellow and blue. and really hoped that the bright yellow and bright blue I saw would be what I ended up with. I then chucked 2 faded bottle green sheets into the blue dye to give them a little oomph that they were missing. I do like re-using dye, though really one should not as it's mostly stopped working by then.

I carefully carried it all up to the attic and made sure to put the blue dyed area's at the bottom of the machine with the yellow on top. and washed it according to the instructions. I hung up the pillow cases on hangers and the duvet cover and sheet over the banister.

2 days later it was all finally dry and I could get it onto my bed and take photo's

 This is the sheet, as you can see the yellow is not so bright but it's still a very nice yellow and certainly suits the paintwork (not visible in this shot).

 Here it all is on my bed, the 6 pillow cases on the pillows, the duvet cover and the sheet hidden under it - it really brightens the room!

A side shot so you can see the colour changes on the cover.

Here is an attempt at showing the special thing that happens in artificial light - the yellow seems to change to a very light spring green - so wonderful that it changes like that! It's probably due to the excess blue dye when I put it in the washing machine.

All in all I'm happy with the results and I know I'll be using Dylon's hand dye dyes again - just on something smaller next time hehe.

Recycled plastic... Part 2

Having used part of a large red plastic bag to complete my recycled plastic bag earlier this week I had a good chunk of it left. It seemed a huge waste and contrary to the theme of recycling to have such a large amount of the bag leftover to just throw it away, even if it was into the plastic recycling bin, so I decided to cut what was left into 3/8"/ 1 cm strips and crochet them into a little basket. I used my size 10 hook, which is a size P in the USA and a 000 in the UK

Crocheting plastic strips is hard work, even when they are as skinny as the ones I was using so my hands soon complained about life so it took a bit longer to make than it would normally have done to make a same sized basket from yarn. I have no idea how many strips i used but I used a large expensive clothes shop bag so it was rather on the large size and quite thick. This did result in a fairly sturdy basket which can be used to keep things in.

The basket is roughly 4 inches / 10 cm in diameter and 5 inches / 12.5 cm high.

12 Months of Christmas

Introduction:

 I can hear you thinking "what on earth is she talking about? Christmas was last month, it doesn't last all year!" and you are entirely correct, it doesn't last all year. What this is, is a new plan of mine that I thought of because I was disappointed that I just didn't find enough time in the run up to Christmas to make some additional Christmas decorations as I had planned. So, I thought to myself, "What can I do to have the additional home made decorations without running out of time?" And the answer was actually quite simple: make something each month during the year. Each month I hope to find time to make something new and I will share the result. If I create the pattern myself I will also share it, otherwise I will direct you to where I got the idea/pattern from, however the plan is to think of each months creation myself. 

Some things I've been thinking of making but never got round to:

• Place mats 
• Additional baubles 
• Wall hanging (this might take more than a month) 
• A new door wreath (can't use real foliage due to allergies) 
• Napkins (Christmas deserves real fabric napkins) 
• Napkin rings/holders

Since I'm all about using what I already have as much as possible I'll certainly delve into the boxes of bits and pieces I've collected over the years, not to mention my rather sizeable fabric, bead and thread stash. I'll be sewing, quilting, embroidering and who knows what else to make these projects and my hope is that I don't need spend a penny on the projects and that I can do them all from my stash.

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The First project:

I had a 16 inch wide x width of fabric striped Christmas fabric that inspired me to start project 1 - what will probably become a tree skirt. I cut it using a 9 degree circle wedge template and cut it in such a way that the pattern continued all the way round the circle - a rather wasteful way of cutting BUT it achieved the pattern I wanted. This is what the fabric looked like while cutting:

I only wish my fabric had been wider - just a few more inches would have meant I could get 10 slices out of the width instead of 8 making it a 1/4 per run of cuts that I got out of the fabric which then in turn would have meant I got a nice complete pattern all the way round. Halfway sewn - you can see how much smaller it gets when the seam allowance is used:

And this is them all sewn together - to make a full circle I'd have needed 40 sections but I only got 38 from the fabric.:

At the moment it's on my bed with different fabrics underneath while I decide what borders to give it as it's a bit too short to cover up the basket my fake tree sits in.

As you can see it's a really effective way of using a striped fabric and really easy too!

IHSW, Christmas baking and more

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are now enjoying that quieter time of year between Christmas and the new year - at least it always is for me. Now on to the updates:
I didn't get as much embroidery done as planned during the weekend as I was still recovering from being ill - needed lots of sleep so it was good the ids were at ex's for the weekend. All I managed was a small start on the air side of the next biscornu that goes with the fire and water one. No photo's of that right now as it's too dark to take photo's and ecru on white really doesn't show up well.

As every year I did some Christmas baking - this year I started with cookies on Monday using Sugarbelle's recipe and put them away till I had more time to ice them, which I did on Sunday. The plan was to ice them using royal icing as per her recipe but the amounts were too large so I stuck with the recipe on the Wilton's meringue powder packet. The cookies are delicious and having seen that Sugarbelle used flavouring in her icing I decided to do that too and made the icing lemon flavoured using lemon zest. One thing I found out is that my hands really, really don't like piping for any length of time (outlining more than 3 cookies actually lol) so i decided to go with the quick and dirty method of no outlining and either spreading it on or using shaped tips to pipe allover patterns.  Not the best looking but they taste good so who cares - my kids certainly don't... they loved them!

In between making the cookies and icing them I did a lot more - first of course was to get the tree up and decorated and get my Lego Christmas Village out. This year I used the bauble boxes and a white sheet set up under the tree to put the village on and it really does look good at night when the lights are off but the tree is still lit. The kids always have a lot of fun playing with this and used the angled slopes between the different levels of the boxes as ski slopes for the Lego skiers.

On the Thursday before Christmas it was time for the bi-annual Christmas fair at the kids school so it was time for me to bake something for them to sell there - this year they wanted 48 mini cupcakes so that's what I made for them a couple of hours before the fair so they were at their freshest.  Half were chocolate and the other half vanilla topped with a same flavoured butter cream icing. (I'd used a different recipe than I usually do - a local sweetshop was selling this packet of powder to make the butter cream with but I didn't really like the end result so threw the rest of the packet away.)

However my baking wasn't done for the day as I also wanted to send the kids to school with cupcakes for their classmates and also some for the teachers lounge as I do every year. I needed 30 for youngest's class and 27 for oldest's class and at least 50 for the teachers lounge to make sure there was enough for all the teachers AND the admin team. In the end I baked 114 large cupcakes in 5 flavours: Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, caramel and apple/cinnamon. I had some batter leftover from baking 2 full trays of each flavour (except chocolate which I only had enough better to make 1 1/2 trays)so I put the leftovers into the mini cupcake tins and ended up with an additional 36 mini cupcakes. I iced each flavour with the same flavour icing, except the apple/cinnamon ones which I iced with lemon butter cream (which as you may notice I didn't have enough of to completely ice everything).  Taking them to the school was a bit of a challenge till I thought of using the (cleaned out) bauble boxes to carry them in.

In the morning I helped the kids get to their classes with their boxes and then went home for some much needed coffee before taking the box you see above in a sneak ninja delivery attack to the school. Since they have an open door policy at the kids school I was able to sneak in, sneak into the teachers lounge, grab some serving dishes and put the cupcakes out and sneak off again without begin seen - the cupcake fairy strikes again! Of course they did know "who dunnit" due to the kids taking the same to their classes but it's still fun to do the cupcake fairy bit.

On Saturday I had the house full of kids so I baked another batch of cupcakes and surprised the kids with them - I made half vanilla and the other half strawberry. The kids and their friends were overjoyed and the cupcakes did their usual disappearing trick.

Somehow or another I was all ready on Christmas Eve despite starting the preparations a week late due to the illness I had the week before, so I decided to try my hand at baking an 8 strand braided bread. As you can see it didn't exactly look "right" as I'd misunderstood the braiding instructions, thought it looked weird (which it did) and then made some adjustments, which didn't need to be done at all. However it tasted good and went well with our Christmas Eve table grill meal (we usually do this on boxing day but due to the kids going to ex on boxing day we moved it to Christmas eve)

Overall it was a  busy week baking and doing stuff but the effort was certainly worth the end results!

Another mass update

I seem to be having a great deal of trouble remembering to make updates here in-between all the finishing of projects that I have been doing.I need to remember that just throwing my photo's at Deviant art isn't enough and I need to also update here.

So here is what I've been up to since my last update:

This time something different.. inspired by the #ArtisanCraft creative craft challenge. I found these plastic button things that you could embroider in the sewing shop when I was getting eyelets for the corset I made last week (no photo yet - I'd taken it with me to England last week and mailed it home as it was too heavy for my suitcase - damned Ryan Air max carry on weight restrictions!) and thought they'd be fun to play with, they are but they are also rather fiddly to hold as well.

They are 7/8 inch - 2,25 cm across and embroidered with a full strand of DMC in 3 shades of blue and ecru.

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Happy birthday DA!

Sources and inspiration:

The DA llama badges
The DA logo
The DA 10 birthday badge that I changed to show a 12
I was inspired the colour of Peridot (August's birthstone) when I made the "12" badge green.

I made the flapping cloaks of the super llama's different in an attempt to show that they were indeed flapping.

I mounted the embroidery on a pale pink card and gave it a slightly smaller blue glossy card border as the front of the card.

Sizes:

Complete Embroidery: not quite 3 1/4" by a smidge over 4"
Colours used overall: 84
Complete card: 5 7/8" x 7 3/8"

Llama's :
18 x 15 stitches each
Brown has 30 colours, albino has 32 colours
7/8" x 1" each

"12" Birthday badge:
17 x 26 stitches
23 colours
1" x a smidge over 1 3/8"

DA Logo:
23 x 23 stitches
2 colours
a smidge over 1 1/4 " square

"Happy Birthday" message:
57 x 23 stitches
1 colour (I just love variegated thread!)
3" x a smidge over 1 3/8 "

All sizes are given Width x height, this also applies to the stitch numbers.
Patterns available on request.
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Oh wow!! I won 3rd place with this! Thanks!!

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I revamped my bedroom because the bed had broken and I thought it was high time I painted the walls since it still had the decorations from when I painted it for oldest when he was 2 and moved into the room. The photo's below show the room the evening it was more or less finished

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I started finishing my UFOs (UnFinished Objects) to finally get them done. 

This is the first of my UFO's that I've completed.

I have no idea when I started this but it was a good 6 years ago at the very least. It was less than half finished when i picked it up again and took me about a day to complete. I finished it at last today

It's the Lanarte kit 36016 - I left out the word "Narcissus" to the right because I don't like that kind of thing in embroideries.

Stats:
16 colours
3" x almost 4 1/2 " / 7,6 cm x 11,5 cm

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The dog rose is one of my favourite roses - I love the smell and will sniff the flowers *even though* they give me a nasty allergy attack afterwards (yes I know.. I just can't help myself lol)

This is the second UFO I've completed in my attack of the UFO's and one which I was dreading for some reason - it was really easy to do in the end and only took me a couple of hours to complete. The frame was part of the kit (Permin of Copenhagen kit 13-0172)

Stats:
10 colours
1 thread over the weave
1 3/4" x 2 5/8"/ 4,5 x 6,5 cm

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This was made for the #stitchingpirates Tiny Pillow Cross Stitch Contest! . I was planning on something rather larger and more complicated but time was against me I decided that since this was a mini pillow competition I'd make mine *really* small

As one of my main goals in art is to use what I have on hand as much as possible I applied the same principals to this project.

Materials used:
Embroidery fabric: a 2 1/2 inch/ 6,5 cm scrap of 18 count/7 squares per cm white Aida
DMC floss in 12 colours: 699, 700, 701, 702, 703, 704, 740, 741, 742, 743, 744, 745
A 2 1/2 inch/ 6,5 cm scrap of Bali batik
Stuffed with mini scraps of quilting fabric

Stats
Finished size: 2"/5 cm
Number of stitches: 1024
Size of corner tassels 1/2 " / 1,25 cm

I have for a long time thought of doing something with quilt blocks in embroidery and although I haven't actually done much with Log cabins in quilting I do love the resulting look of them. I made this pattern based on 4 blocks of the "uneven log cabin" (an example of the quilt pattern is here: [link] ) turned so that the skinny "logs" were all in the centre and the wider ones made the outside edges. I had originally planned on adding backstitches in black to show where the "seams" would be but when I did some on the embroidery it looked horrid so I spent an age removing all the backstitches and wished I'd had time to do a sample first.

My stitches aren't as even as usual for 3 reasons:
1) I'd used a piece of Aida that was too small for any of my embroidery rings and so couldn't put it under tension to keep it even and had to make do with the way I held the bit of fabric.
2) My hands didn't like the above and complained bitterly but time was too short to put it away for a few days as I was expecting to need at least a day for all the backstitches that I didn't do in the end.
3) When removing the backstitching some of the time I caught a stitch and pulled it - I have done my best to return them to where they should be but it didn't always work and 2) means I can't go back and re-do stuff as I need to rest my hands.

Solution for 1 will be to use a larger piece of Aida next time OR baste it to some fabric and then put it in the frame (didn't remember that trick till I was writing this lol)
The solution to the other two is to start sooner, or choose to wait for the next competition if I'm too short of time.

I chose the colour of the backing fabric because it had the colours of the embroidery in it.

I made 1/2" tassels with the darkest embroidery thread as I like how that looks on pillows. It was a bit of a challenge to make them look nice and even as this was the first time I'd ever made tassels.

After I'd finished the embroidery I washed and pressed it and then carefully attached the tassels to the seam allowance of the embroidery to keep them in place while I sewed and after it was finished. I then pinned the backing fabric to the embroidery and hand sewed it all in place leaving what turned out to be a too small a hole to turn the stiff Aida through easily but with a bit of patience, a *lot* of easing and a chopstick I was able to turn it the right way round.

Next time I will first sew on a border of normal fabric before sewing it to the back as that will mean that the side seams are all the same fabric strength and stiffness and it will make the corners easier to turn and more pointy (although with this pillow I am not too displeased with how the corners turned out ) I will also leave a larger opening to turn through.

Keeping the work the same way round was a bit of a challenge as it looks the same from every angle so in the end I used a bit of thread to baste a couple of stitches to the top so I'd know which way round it was. With the frame on I don't have this issue as it's easy to tell which way is up due to the closure.

Overall I'm reasonably happy with the results

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Edit:

WOW!

I won joint first prize with *pinkythepink !! Thanks!!

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Last July Project Educate on Deviant Art held a Artisans Crafts week and one of the things there was the "Try something new challenge" I fully intended to join in by making a book myself but time ran out on me and I didn't get round to it.

Having decided to make a book myself I didn't want to set this aside as a project and now that I had a bunch of other stuff out of the way (such as my mini pillow and holiday) I thought I'd try my hand at making a Coptic bound journal. I wasn't sure what to do for the cover or pages till I saw the monthly AC challenge maps and lost places which sparked my imagination.

Before I started I read just about every tutorial in the tutorial section and watched some video's on youtube as seeing how a stitch is done is much easier than trying to work out how the drawing was done.

As one of my main goals in art is to use what I have on hand as much as possible I looked around the house for old maps and travel books looking for maps to include on the cover. Unfortunately I only had a couple of small pamphlets that were left over from a biking holiday + from a day trip to a town as well as an old guide to the Algarve so I wasn't able to use a single map for all of it. I used the pamphlets for 3 of the outer covers and some cut out maps from the guide book for the front inner cover. I allowed the folds of the maps to show as it adds texture to the completed journal and shows that real maps were used.

I didn't have much paper of the same colour to hand so I decided to choose the colours based on the different colours you see on maps:
Green for the woods/fields
Yellow for the main roads
White for the smaller roads

All the signatures are made from 4 sheets of paper folded in half to make 8 leaf signatures. I had enough to make 2 signatures in green, 2 in yellow and one in white.

I used the back of a writing pad for the thicker cardboard for the covers.

In my search for stuff I had found an old awl I'd been given at the same time as a 1903 cobblers treadle, it was pretty blunt but there was also a neat little whetstone in the box so I first learnt how to sharpen an awl before using it to make the holes for the stitching. I used the eyelet making tool that I'd used for my corset to make the holes in the covers.

I used DMC embroidery floss (colour 798) for the sewing so I could match the colour of the thread to the blue of the maps (used to make routes) and added some beads and other bits to both of the top holes to add a bit of interest to the book and helps one remember what is the top. I tried to use things that one might have found lying around while travelling: shells, leaves, a coffee bean, a "silver" bead.

I had fun making this and am glad I decided to try my hand at book making

Stats:
Height: 6 1/4" / 16 cm
Width: 4 1/2" /11,5 cm
Thickness: 5/8"/ 1,5 cm

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This is the 3rd UFO I have hauled out of the box and finished.
It was supposed to be a "quilt" with a width 3 of the square patterns and a hight of 4 of them. The pattern has a 1995 copyright on it and I think I must have bought it around that time - not much later than 1996 anyway.

I had to start with a bit of stitch removal because I'd miscounted and some of the stitches were one stitch too far to the left AND I'd been confused by the colours because the kit had said that the "blue" had the white (that I didn't use in the end) in it - in my kit the green did - and with the green and blue so close It was easy to be confused.

I really didn't like the way the green and blue background colours (yes there are two) almost blend together because they are (IMO at least) badly chosen - there should have been more contrast. The quilter in me also didn't like that the darkest green or blue "flowers" are don't have identical bits as this should be the case in the quilt pattern. The green lower bit is filled in where it shouldn't be and in the blue the bottom right one is one stitch shorter per row. The pattern itself is well made and very clear - I have no complaints about the quality of the printed work, just the floss colour choices and the design of the pattern.

I could have "fixed" all this but I'd already started this and didn't want to have to rip even more out to make it "perfect" so I decided to at least make something out of it so I made another mini pillow.

The green in the border (and backing) was a true find - with the green and blue so close it reads as the colour I chose for the borders, even though the colour isn't anywhere in the embroidery. I made the tassels myself again - this time from the medium green and blue from the leftover thread from the kit. The pillow was again completely hand stitched and if you look carefully - well ok you don't have to look *that* carefully to see them - you can see my tiny stitches near the bottom.

Stats and info
The pattern is: Four Winds (Amish Quilts II Kit) CSK-358 by Cross My Heart
Colours used: 6
Aida: Black 14 count / 6 squares per cm
Stitched area: 2 5/8 inch / 6,5 cm square
Stitches: 4 x 18 stitches square with a lattice of 2 stitches wide left empty between them for a total of 1296 cross stitches.
Pillow: 3 3/4 inch / 9,5 cm square
Tassels: 1 1/4 inch / 3 cm long

I'm happy it's finished and glad I decided to make it into a mini pillow instead as the perfectionist in me was screaming quietly the whole time I was working on this.

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One of my youngest son's teachers got married and he wanted to give her something "mummy made" so I dug around and found a partially made wedding bells and rings card that was embroidered on perforated embroidery paper ( this stuff: [link] )

It was supposed to have a lacy frame but youngest insisted I used E 5200 - a light effects perlescant white which was slow going as it does tend to tangle more than normal thread even when put on the needle the way DMC says and as I couldn't pull it tight it was horribly uneven. After 4 days of hell and only a small amount done (well small for me - I usually work faster) I gave up trying to do that and just cut out the bells and rings bit that I had done. I then glued them to a pale pink card and let youngest write in the card himself.

The pattern and perforated paper comes from DMC collection book number 6 that was printed in 1994.

I'm afraid I forgot to measure the work before I let youngest take it to school but the bells embroidery is about 2 1/2 inches square.

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The 5th UFO that I have done as far as I'm going to. It's the blue butterfly pattern by Thea Gouverneur (pattern #1024) and is supposed to have a stalk and another leaf and a gazillion back stitches but I had reached the point of call it done or throw it away as I have developed a deep lying hate for uneven rough woven linen (and I already hated backstitching anyway) I have discovered by careful comparison of the embroidery I did and the pictures online of the pattern that my colours are also not completely correct and if I had continued they would have continued to happen - some of the mistakes i have won't show now because I didn't do the stalk.

Another thing that disappointed me was that the pattern is hand drawn and the symbols are not always clear and sometimes even completely missing so I had to guess what to put in that empty place - basically I filled it with whatever colour I had on my needle when I noticed it unless it looked out of place to do so.

In the end I just called it quits and stopped - I have a feeling that this will become part of something at a later date - when I get past the hate for the linen

Size of embroidery: 6 x 4 1/2 " / 15,25 x 10,1 cm