Shibori showdown

At last today- the best bit about spending all those hours sewing tiny stitches into fabric and then gathering them up... dying and opening the stitching!

I spent yesterday sewing 8 squares for our international fabric swap which is going along great guns with lots of techniques and fabrics travelling round the world. I have also written it up as a tutorial over on my How to- Textiles page if you'd like to see more.

Here are a few typical techniques, straight lines, wavy lines, wraps and sewn circles, etc. Some are sewn with running stitch, others are sewn with a running stitch over a tiny fold which gives a lovely spotty double line.

 

And here's how they turned out... most of them came out beautifully, a couple needed stronger thread so I could pull the gathers tighter, but they still look pretty.Now they're tucked in envelopes ready to fly off, so I'm going to have to do a few more while I've got the dye mixed.

So snow is white, eh?

Good grief! I do a few projects, knit a few bits and all of a sudden I've not posted for forever! I must make a point of squeezing some time to post more...

We were forecast snow eventually in the UK, some would get it more than others, but we woke up last week to a small spattering, followed by an absolute deluge. A rare thing in our southeastern position. We seem to have our own little micro-climate which is more in line with Calais than the town 8 miles down the road! I do like snow- very much, but I don't like weeks of grey, sloppy slush, which is what we tend to get- a nice covering then a prolonged thaw out. Messy, and dangerous, ice over night, slush during the day.

However, the long thaw has been a bonus for me because I wanted to experiment with something since I read about it last year, and with little snow guaranteed  I had to make the most of it... so as the snow slowly disappeared it was perfect yesterday for a bit of snow dying- or so I thought!
Having planned for this some time ago I had all my supplies stashed away; Procion MX dyes, soda ash, salt, squeezy bottles, fabrics, and a few tubs. For a full tutorial of my dip into dying check out my How to- Textiles page... but here is a quickie

The fabrics are soaked in a soda ash solution to make the fibres more receptive to the dyes. While this was happening I gathered up the rest of my equipment and mixed the dyes.

These are the small containers with a bamboo fabric scrunched up in the bottom of each, snow piled on top and dye squirted over the snow. All the containers were left for over 24 hours, the sled was left outside to thaw naturally, while I brought the small ones in overnight.

This is a close-up of one of the bamboo pieces, thrown into the container with excess dye from the mixing. Not too bad considering it was most of the colours together.. it is brown, but so many shades and patterns!   I did quite a few pieces, one of which I have to cut into 12" squares for a Fabric Swap I'm hosting on Stitchin Fingers. We're all trying new techniques and swapping our results- what a perfect way to create a unique stash and find techniques we've not tried before... this is our first month so I'm really excited and can't wait to see what everyone else has done!
The sled was a little more fun... not only did it not thaw out outside, when I brought it into the kitchen it still didn't want to thaw! What does that tell you! I did cheat in the end and hurry it along.... the results are over on the How to page.
If you want to try this but don't have the luxury of snow you can use ice with dry dye... that's my next project once the fabric arrives. Why not have a go?

Anyone remember the old party games?

Best be quick- It's the last day to sign up for the December Fabric Postcard swap on Stitchin Fingers, the theme this month is "Toys". I wanted to do something special so I planned to do a chess set that folded into the postcard size... but then realised that the squares would be TINY! 

So I racked my brains a bit and remembered a game we used to play at parties... great fun running around with a blindfold, and to get to stick pins in the wall, my word, such wickedness!

So this is my tiny, portable version of an game- Pin the tail on the donkey.

Here's the outside, there was  little point making it just 1 postcard size, I doubled it so you get a bit more to play with, well, my swap partner will...

And here's the cute little donkey. His tail is secured onto a piece of velcro, which sticks nicely to felt. Hours of fun, eh! Well, maybe not, but it was fun to make and I hope it inspires a few more portable games to be created. I've just heard, my swap partner is in Oz, I know there is still a memory of alot of our old traditions so maybe my partner will be familiar?

Here's a link to download andd print your own donkey... printable_pin_the_tail_on_the_donkey