a play day

it  finally happenned: A & R had planned to get down to some dyeing experimenting for a looooong time and on saturday we got down to business! G joined in.

We used 4 different dyes as our first adventure:

              1 red onion skins - simmered

2 coffee - simmered

  3 avacado - simmered

                                                             4 chlorophyll (a gift from Merlene, of the Fibre shop in Barraba. A plug for a wonderful lady and an inspiring shop in a small country town nw of Tamworth. 'Do yourself a favour.....')

mordant: alum

R worked with a few different silks and produced some wonderful pieces:

but the best one came out at the end of the evening:

don't know why it comes out sideways - all the others are right way up!

this silk was done in red onion with the spinner gum leaves laid in it, rolled up and then tied with string. 6 hrs in the hot dye bath. the blue sample next to it is the chlorophyll - an intense blue on silk! a sky blue on G's cotton pieces.

I worked with wool samples as i want to dye some larger quantities of 1 ply to get shades of more natural colours than the ones in the shops which are all either strongly variegated or strong plain colours:

my samples ready to pop into the dye baths

i forgot to take pictures of the results - next time!

the coffee came out quite pale; the onion came out lovely shades of limey olive green. both darker if left in longer......

greta doing some drawing practice

 

    

and then my other experiment using the 'bus-sticks' i've been collecting. they are small thin straight pieces of steel that i find on the roads around Sydney.....

i've packed the piece in wet mulch in a plastic box and i am keeping it on my car dash in the hot sun for a month to see what happens