Dyeing Weekend

The Free Spirit Artisans' Second Annual Dyeing Weekend finished Sunday afternoon, with seven tired and happy women pleased with their results.

Being the knitter in the group, I had ordered 2 sock blanks from KnitPicks and saved them to dye on this special weekend.

I also dyed a lone skein of organic cotton I found in my stash (it's the blue-purple one on the right). Included in this photo are some cheesecloth and old little doilies I dyed to use for embellishments, and a hint of some of the fabric I dyed too.

I then cut two lengths of cotton off a skein, and dyed one red/fuschia and the other blue/green, for embroidery. The very blue stuff you see in this photo is the string dyed by happy accident as it was used to tie a Shibori-type piece around some PVC pipe (not shown).



This year I tried some stamping (geometrics) and stenciling (the gerbera daisy-like flowers). As expected, I did better with practice! In the left photo you can just see a bit of the silk that was my first stamping effort! (Note to self: make sure the dye isn't so drippy when you apply it to the stamp!)



The purple in this last photo is fabric I placed over a piece of plastic snow fence, painting the dye on with a sponge 'brush'. I think it's one of my very favourite pieces!