painted satin & dyed lace

I have been wanting to make a little trinket box for some time but I just haven't found enough free hours in the day to make a start. 

 Last evening a business colleague called in for a meeting with my husband so I took advantage of the fact that I would not be missed and spent some time starting off this project.

It is to be a small square (cube) fabric and lace box suitable for the dressing table.  I started by cutting out a strip of card (acid free of course) for the main body of the box.

The fabric is some white satin from the stash and the lace is synthetic and I tried to dye it when I was with Linda years ago.  It is a very pale gold colour.

To create the colour on the fabric I dipped the satin in some lukewarm water and then used a brush to apply some lumiere paints to the damp fabric.  In order to spread it out a bit I rolled the fabric up and then rinsed it 
 

 under the cold tap.  I wasn't too bothered about making it even or consistent because I want it to show through the lace in a random way.

Once I was happy with the colour I placed the fabric on an old towel and ironed it till it was almost dry.

I had to wait till the morning to attach the lace to the satin.
Using mistyfuse I bonded the lace to one half of the fabric as I didn't want the lace on the inside of the box.

To give a bit more shape I have put some batting under the fabric on the inside and now just have to decide how much bling to add before making the base and the top.


So far I am quite happy with this little box.  It is quite pretty and the colours remind me of the sand and sea. 



 

More colour and prize draw

I have been trying out some more colour combinations and now I have heaps of lace, fabric & doileys ready to play with.

Of course some will go to the winner of the October give-away.  My granddaughter is too busy to visit at present (just 13 and at secondary school) so I asked Mike to draw the winner.  First out was Jensters: Congratulations!!!  Jen please  email me your address and I will post some goodies to you.
I really appreciate everyone's comments on my blog and will have another giveaway before Christmas. 

Playing with Colour

 I have been playing around with colour and prints - the background fabric is some I dyed recently and you have to agree it is "interesting".  It is also very difficult to put to any good use.  
The printed fabric is some I purchased some time ago at a patchwork shop.  It is a design registered by an aboriginal artist although the fabric itself is made in asia somewhere.  Our textiles industry is all but dead here, saddly.  Anyway I have not been able to figure out a use for it and the dozen or so other prints I bought at the time.  Anyway as it turned out as I was looking through my stash this came to hand just as I was thinking about the dyed fabric and I thought it would be an ideal combination.  The next thing was to decide how to use it.  Out with the scissors and the sewing machine and this is what I have done so far.  I want to add some beads or buttons and some stitching and see where it ends up.  Your comments or suggestions would be most welcome.

More crazy patchwork

I decided to use some of my recently dyed fabric for the lining of this needle book.    Using the sewing machine I attached a layer of batting to the back of the lining: a bit of freestyle quilting.

Then I attached the lining and wadding to the piece of patchwork.  With the right sides together I stitched along three sides and then turned the piece in the right way ( a bit like a pillow case).

This is how it looks on the outside at present.  Still quite a lot of embellishment needed.  Once that is done I will hand stitch the open end and add some felt for the leaves of the book.

I am hoping to finish this tomorrow so I can start on something else.

A HAPPY OUTCOME

Well here is the result of the dying disaster.  The blue mostly washed right out but I had added a little yellow and that took really well.  The pieces I put in the pot of red dye turned into a nice lilac colour. 

I am quite pleased with the results all in all.  Plenty of scope with these gelati colours.  Very pretty and soft.

I have quite a collection of lace and trims now, which is just as well as I have decided to try out some crazy patchwork.  I have plenty of scraps to use up so lots of scope for new projects.

This is a piece I made a start on last night.  Now the fun starts with embellishing it.  When to stop will be the difficult part.

disastrous dying

Today I thought I would soak some fabric and lace for dying:  I put a basin in the sink with Soda Ash and water and dunked some calico and lengths of lace and went on to mix the dye.

Then disaster struck: I knocked the container of blue dye into the basin of soda ash and fabric.  As I was pressed for time I decided to drain as much of the liquid out as I could and then added a bit more dye and hope for the best.  I put a little bit of red dye in the small pot and put some of the fabric from the blue mix into the red and now I will wait to see what I end up with.

To add to the mess, my gloves leaked and I have very colourful hands.

KEEPING BUSY

The last week has flown by and although I have managed to do a little stitching I have had even less time to write.  Now I am sitting here wondering where to start.

I will begin with a couple of explanations about the fabric dying.  The first time I ever used procion dyes was when I visited Linda in Queensland.  Linda showed me how to prepare the fabrics and mix the dyes.  It was a day of lots of fun and laughter along with learning a new skill.  We were lucky to have the whole day together and I learnt a lot.  Visit Linda at her blog  http://billabongs2bling.blogspot.com/ 

The idea for using the ziplock bags came from Three Creative Studios, technique of the month for last month.

http://threecreativestudios.com/freeprojects/tom/fabricpaintinganddyeing.pdf    Sue Bleiweiss suggested the ziplock bags in her tutorial.

Yesterday my daughter came to visit and we celebrated her 40th birthday with food and wine and I gave her the mask I made.  I am pleased to say she was thrilled with it!  

I  gave my middle daughter the wheat bag I made and that was also well received.  I had made a little sachet of lavender as well as it is her favourite fragrance.

This is the first time I have given my daughters  things I have made especially for them: it seemed to go down well so I will continue to do this in the future.

Oh talking of gifts, I received a parcel in the post from Judy.  It is a kit with the pattern and makings of pin cushions - one of my obsessions!  

http://judysfabrications.blogspot.com/   Have a look at Judy's fantastic crazy patchwork!   I will take a pic of the kit tomorrow.    Thanks so much Judy.

Oh gosh I nearly forgot the lovely gift I received from my friend Ann, from the uk,  who is visiting her family who live near here.  We had a day out last week and I hope to see her again on Wednesday before her trip back home on Sunday.

Well I think that is all for now.  Happy stitching everyone.

Colouring my world

I woke up yesterday feeling like I simply could not keep up with all I need to do on a daily basis.  I planned to have a day out with a friend who is visiting from the UK and felt a bit overwhelmed.  Well in order to make things even worse I decided I simply had to dye some fabric - right away.  So first thing in the morning I soaked some fabric in soda ash and water.

I left it to soak for the day while I was out and when I arrived home I squeezed the excess liquid out of each piece and put them  into  plastic zip lock bags. I had some procion dye (powder) that Linda had given me so I mixed some up in a plastic jug with hot water.  I don't measue anything much and don't record what I have done.  This is not a problem as I don't want to repeat anything anyway.  Well, that's my excuse!!  As I mixed each colour I poured some onto the fabric in the bags.  Again, this was done in a fairly hapharzard way.  

Once I was happy with the colours I had produced I sealed up the bags, giving them a bit of a massage to distribute the colour.  This was done fairly gently as I didn't want to create an even distribution of colour.

These stayed in the basin overnight to ensure a reasonable depth of colour.

 This morning I took each piece of fabric out of the bags and rinsed under cold water until the water was clear.  This is the most time consuming part of the whole process as each piece needs to be thoroughly rinsed seperately .

Once that was done the pieces that were of similar colours i.e. reds, browns, oranges went into the washing machine and then into the dryer and finally ironed.

I was very pleased with the results - the fabric I used was some old calico curtain lining and some old sheet.  They are perfect for this sort of dying and take up the colour really well.  I also dyed some lace with the fabric.

So as you see, the colours are terrific and will be handy for crazy patchwork and the ironing and the rest of the housework is still waiting for me.!!!!  Best of all I have really enjoyed doing this.

HAPAZONE

I have had a bit of a try with the hapazome.  I did not prepare very well and the results are a bit hapharzard.  However I did enjoy it and will do it again.  I used the iron to heat set the fabric but wonder if I should use some textile medium as well.  Anyway I will attach some pics.

I found that some of the harder leaves worked better than the soft ones and some flowers didn't work at all.  However I will give it another go.