What lucky people you are! No post for months then two in a short time!

Yesterday was an exciting day for the family as my nephew John graduated from University College London with and MSc in Telecommunications from the Science and Engineering Department. We are all very proud of him and I got to go to the event! As some of you know John and Ann I thought you would like to see a couple of pictures. Unfortunately the stage lighting was red but I have done what I could with the pictures.

Dyeing Masterclass

Here, at last are the pctures of my recent dyeing, which was done in a Ruth Issett Masterclass.

We managed to try out several techniques in the two days, all of which I enjoyed, even if some of MY samples were less than successful. (my fault not Ruth's of course).

We set about doing some baggie dyeing, having been asked to prepare twelve bags in advance, each containing six different fabrics. Mine were polycotton, smooth white cotton, callico, cotton scrim, cotton velvet and a silk/cotton mix I put them on the line in that order.

We then took four sets of three bags and dyed then with Procion MX dye mixtures of our own choice. On the first row I used ultramarine and rose brown in increasing quantities. Note that there are none with pure colour.

On the second row I used scarlet and rose brown.

The third row has scarlet and marine Violet.

The last row has Golden Yellow and Turquoise.

We also did two sets of low immersion dyeing . At the end of the first row is the one I did by adding the dye to the first piece of scrunched fabric, followed by soda ash. Then the next layer was done the same way with a different colour. Then I added a third fabric.

As you can see I didn't really add enough dye, but these can be overdyed I suspect.

At the end of the second row is the result when I added the soda ash to the dye before I dyed. This time it was pointed out that I didn't have enough in the first set so more was added. better result!

Painted Dyeing.

Next we did some painted dyeing. We had prepared some of the fabrics in advance by adding soda ash to them and then drying.

I found that the fabrics I added the soda ash to in advance gave a more blended result.

In the picture the bottom row had the soda ash added to the fabric before dyeing.

Each piece is a different fabric. Top row is cotton velvet, habotai silk, Sylco, white poycotton (which is not supposed to dye!), cotton organdie, silk and cotton delphine.


Bottom row is viscose satin, silk cotton, fine white cotton, silk cotton, coarse white cotton, and finally,callico.

This was fun session, although VERY hard work.