Monday 29 July 2013

Dyeing for Sunshine

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.

.

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..........