More Dye Experiments

I am becoming a little obsessed with dyeing threads, it is so easy and yet so rewarding. A few of you have asked if I will post a tutorial....yes, I will do a post showing the supplies and process I use... Please note that there are currently lots and lots of great tutorials to be found online.  I hope to put one together in the very near future, showing how I go about it.

This latest batch consists of 6 strand embroidery floss, some strange cotton skeins that I found, along with some lovely #20 mercerized cotton (it is the finest I have found so far)

Here is a look at where I placed the colour on this skein of 6 strand embroidery floss (it started out white)

here is another skein....before it was wrapped and after...this is that #20 cotton

here you can see the whole batch. I wanted to see what would happen with dye that had been mixed (water only) not activated, but sitting for a week......I was very happy to see that it still worked brilliantly. I also used some plain old Rit dye......it worked well too. Some of these skeins started out white, some off-white, and others were already a soft colour of some sort that I simply "punched" up

Dyeing Session

I have done a little bit of thread dyeing previously, but this time, I experimented with commercial embroidery floss, as well as cotton and even tried some that had metallic thread running through it.

I started with mostly whites, but as you can see in this photo of the thread soaking, I did use a couple of skeins that already had colour

here they are, wrapped and "batching"

I am quite pleased with the results. 

just a little sparkle

A "Blog-versary" and Hand Dyed Threads

I can hardly believe it... I began this blog 5 years ago.....well, actually....5 years plus a week ( kinda let the "blog-versary" slip by)

In my very first post I said:  "Blogging is a new concept for me. I have absolutely no clue as to what I am doing just yet but I have never let that stop me before. I have found many blogs to be intriguing and inspiring. What will I bring to this forum?....I do not know. I will just have to see where this leads."

Over the past 5 years, I have stitched, stamped, carved, drawn, painted, stenciled, beaded, dyed, printed, discharged, inked, doodled, designed, batiked and papercut, in addition to cotton and wool, I have used leaves, rocks, dryer sheets, paper, metal and other "found" objects. It has been 5 years of experimentation and exploration, I am loving playing with everything I can get my hands on.

This past weekend, I spent time dyeing threads, I decided to see what results could be obtained using just 3 colours of dye.

After creating several skeins with plain, off-white mercerized cotton.....about 15 yards in each, I soaked them in a soda ash solution, then, mixed up a yellow, an orange and a cherry red dye.

I saturated the cotton with dye in a variety of ways, each giving different effects.....I think my favourites came from applying dye to specific areas using an eye dropper. Here is a closer look at a few of them

One thing leads to another

In addition to snow dyeing a bit of fabric, I just had to have a go with some threads as well.

of course, I wanted to stitch something with them to see the effect on cloth.
Deciding what to stitch?..... I drew this dragonfly

hand stitched with my new multi-coloured thread.....I like it!

 This one, blue/green dyed threads stitched on my dyed fabric, became a pin cushion.

Then,..... well...... you know I could not resist doing a complete doodle

linking up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays