Our dyeing day had been planned since January - it is with much (muucccccchhhhhh) excitement we hold our annual dyeing day. For the last two/three weeks we have experienced temperatures of nearly 30 everyday. The weatherman however had predicted heavy storms all day - with our dyeing day definitely being an outside event we began to get slightly worried.
Saturday morning we all woke to Sunshine - yippppeeee - climbing into old clothes - picking up our boxes of 'stuff' off we all headed off to CD. We nearly had a full house this month - however HS was away welcoming her second grandchild into the world - little baby Alice (wonderful name). Congratulation V & R and of course congratulations HS - we all look forward to seeing the pictures of the little one!
Now this dyeing does take a little concentration to begin with - we had previously mixed our soda and salt solutions (more details can be found on plate-spinning-mama) - so this morning we headed straight for the dyes. We are so very lucky to have a resident expert within out group - CD - who, as part of her City and Guilds study was able to go a bit more in depth with the dyeing.
Choosing the base colours - warm and cold.
Such lovely colours - just missing a straw, ice and maybe a cocktail umbrella. Some extra colours made - just because we could!
With the dye ready - other 'extras' were laid out.....
One of us was much better prepared than the rest of us....... now a little test - remember this pictures - you'll need it later on!
Even the spoons got us excited......looooook at those wonderful colours.
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And here we go - we all had white cotton fabric to dye - as we generally do on a dyeing day - but this year....
With our new found love of all things wool - HW had also come along with some white cotton wool.....
White cotton T-shirts from CD, cotton top to revamp from AB and a few cotton shopping bags .......
Experiments ......
Variegated wool.......
Dyeing in a jam jar.......
Over dyeing from a previous session - velvet....
We broke off for lunch, a very welcomed break after such a busy morning. Now guess which one of us had the yellow rubber gloves on?
A trip round the garden before lunch.....
Lunch was tremendous as always -
Summer refreshments - Elderflower cordial - fast becoming the must for lunch times on a QQ meeting.
And a whole host of desserts - even one that camouflages itself with the table cloth.....
We finished a long leisurely lunch late afternoon and decided that we were actually all dyed out - so the afternoon was spent enjoying tea, flowers, general chit chat and a little bit of show and tell.
A massive downpour at 4pm did nothing to to dampen our enjoyment - we had all achieved what we wanted - the boxes were safely packed in the car and we were under cover!
We even had a new craft person amongst us today.....
With his 'man tools' set out in the garden producing some 'manly' wooden mirrors.....
Now ..... a small thought ...... we should be able to dye that wood..........
