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Saturday 26 November 2016

Sunshine and Solar

It has been a beautiful, sunny day here - warm enough to sit outside after a week of grey, damp weather.
The sunshine reminded me that I have not updated you on the results of my solar dyeing. You may remember that here I told you about the book I had been reading called 'Slow Stitch' which included instructions for slow/solar dyeing.
It's been a lovely, sunny autumn overall so I was able to play with lots of jars of fibres and natural dye.
Each jar contains a half a teaspoon of alum, to help the dyes take, the matter I am using to take the dye from plus an A4 piece of linen or cotton fabric, a skein of cotton or linen thread, some lace and some ricrac. The contents were covered with hot water, given a good stir and then left in the sun for at least two weeks.
I have had some really good results which I have documented in a little record book.





It is interesting to see how the different fibres take the dye.

So here is my collection of fabric and threads - a pleasing variety of colours.

These are my lace's and ricrac.
I plan to start again in the spring trying some different ingredients, in the meant time I want to make a start on slow stitching my collection so far.

15 comments:

  1. Beautiful results and they do have a really natural look to them. Well done x

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  2. Lovely subtle shades. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with them!

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  3. Wow! love how they all turned out. Love the morning glory one. I have never thought of dying ricrac.

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  4. What an interesting experiment, some great results,
    xx

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  5. Oh, my, this looks intriguing! I would enjoy something like this! Your results are gorgeous! XO

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  6. Very interesting Lin, some very pretty colours there.... I wonder what else you'll find for your next session! I've never tried dyeing but this way you describe sounds very do-able!

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  7. Hello Lin,

    Oh they turned out beautifully, so much nicer than the dyes made up with chemicals too. Enjoy your slow stitching.

    Happy days.
    Bev.

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  8. Its a lovely book - good to see that you have successfully followed some steps to dyeing. I wish I had - I turned to Dylon for a recent project and its just not the same!

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  9. What a great idea! I have that book and have admired her dyeing. I love the soft colors that you've achieved and how you tried different things. I'm impressed you kept such good records-that will be so helpful in the future when you want to repeat what you've done.
    Happy stitching,
    Judy

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  10. Oh Lin, these are really lovely and going to be so useful, how clever, I like the morning glories colour

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  11. Lovely colours and only after two weeks.

    So that's why I have alum in the cupboard...LOL I completely forgot about my adventure with dying many years ago. You can get such amazing colours from using flower petals and such.

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  12. I love what you have done here ....... I will have to find where I can purchase alum from first of all, but I'm always keen to work on things we can easily do ourselves and this sounds very simple! I love the blue/ lilac fabric ....... and wow, when you lay them all out together you have quite a lovely selection of fabrics to work with!

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  13. I love the natural colours you have made! You have recorded the details very neatly .... they will be a most useful record over time!
    Very pretty results! Look forward to seeing them in future projects.

    Barbara x

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