rosiepink

Dyed Scrim - what beautiful colours!

Where are the weeks going?  Time certainly is flying by!

Recently, having run out of dyed scrim again, (for use in our feltmaking), we decided to dye some in bulk this time to make the supplies last longer!  Here are some pretty pics for you to enjoy of the result of our day spent as wild washer women!

   

By the end of the day we had dyed so much (about 60 metres - its very addictive!) and enjoyed it so much that we decided we would like to try and make this part of our small business venture and make up bundles of colours to sell to other crafty bods who want to use scrim in their textile arts but either can't or don't want to dye their own (we are lucky that I have an old, old kitchen and the odd splash of turquoise or droplets of purple really don't matter too much!  Now I just hope that hubby doesn't read this and start to look too closely at the evidence!).

04 Oct 2009 Unfortunately scrim bundles will be unavailable until further notice (it's a time thing!). If you would like to try our dyed scrim it is now available in our eBay shop. The bundles are made up of a range of 20 colours so plenty to experiment with - some shades are very pale and others are vibrant to give a good mix.  As always, we appreciate any feedback you might like to give - its always lovely to hear from people to share adventures and tips!  Hope you enjoy the pictures (we think the first pic makes the pile look like it is on a cake stand - quite apt considering it looks good enough to eat!).  The second pic is of the finished product - our scrim "butterflies"!

As well as using the scrim in wet felt making projects we have started experiments with wool top and scrim and other yummy things on the embellisher machine.  When we first got the embellisher we were quite disappointed with it and it didn't seem nearly as exciting as the sales blurb had made it.  However, having played a bit more with it, the felt/scrim combo is looking quite exciting as a base for hand and machine embroidery and we can see lots of possibilities forming...

Dyeing fabrics for feltmaking

We got messy with some dyes this week.   We hand dyed a batch of open weave fabrics for inclusion in our felt.  When making wet felt items such as felt pods or felt cuffs we love to liberally sprinkle in lots of extra bits to add texture and interest.

Here is the result of several hours of mixing potions in the kitchen!

The trouble is that dyeing is so addictive...we ran out of fabric long before we ran out of ideas for mixing colours.  We used procion dyes to give a nice strong colour but we'd also like to have a go at using some natural dyes.  Apparently you can use onion skins and marigolds and other things from the garden so we'll have to do some research.  Has anyone had a go?

Here is an example of how we use our fabrics when making wet felt.  The effect depends on the fabric you use and how much it distorts in the felt - but that is the joy of it - you never know exactly what you're going to get!

Of course its not just used in wet felting it can be used in hand needle felt too.  It also looks great when used on an embellishing machine as you can get lots of pretty loops poking through the fabric.   So much to play with, so little time!