Natural dyeing in Mexico

Try this lovely slide show to see the beautiful natural dyes used in Mexico. It is truly inspiring and uplifting.

Caroline's help with Colour Palettes

Hi all,

here are the colours that were generated by the URL that Caroline recommended (see the comment after the last post). Sadly no lilac, but good never the less. It is really worth a look at and a play with! I particularly like the fact that it give you a choice as to "dull" or "vibrant". This should suit all preferences.

Color Palette Generator

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

URL of image: http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

dull #556655 #334433 #eeeeee #99bbbb #778877

vibrant #448855 #115522 #ffffff #99ccee #66aa77

It's funny that the closest to the lilac is in the "dull" palette!

I also tried the "colour hunter"
This gave similar colours, both are worth trying. Thanks Caroline.

Computer Design Again! 2

Well, I've managed to paste a layer of my chosen weave over the simulated painted warp! I am so excited about this and am going to try it with my New York Skyline exercise.

I had to play around with different tools to Linda's, as she used Photo Filter and I used Photoplus, but I got there in the end. It really has got endless possibilities which are really quite exciting.

Having looked at the design on this post, I think I need to lighten the weft, it's nice, but not quite the right colour.

Many thanks to Linda for showing me the idea.

Computer Design Again!

At the beginning of August Linda, from the Online Guild, posted an interesting post about transfering a weave to a stripe sequence design.

It has taken me quite a while to read through the details and work out how to do it, but I have managed the first part, which is creating the stripes using my Photoplus programme.




This is the picture I was given by a student in my class, which I have used as a starting point. We are using it in class to do some Creative Spinning.



Using the colour pick tool, I selected some of the colours and then using the paintbrush tool I painted the colours onto a new page.

What a surprise when I found the lilac colour in the reflected sky at the bottom of the picture!







I followed Linda's instructions on making a new page, 800 x 2400 pixels to represent the size of a scarf. In this I made rectangles which I filled with some of the chosen colours.

This is quite a pleasing task to do. What would be good is to use one of the programmes effects to put texture into the dark green areas and the pale blue areas. I will try that next.





I then repeated the exercise, but this time I made the stripes vertical. Again I would like to make the green and pale blue into texture by using one of the effects.

Finally I repeated this exercise and added a gradient fill.

All I have to do now is to add a layer to this with the weave on it. I have almost got there, but my weave pattern is to pale to be seen clearly enough.

However, I really like this gradient design and could see it in a lovely silk scarf, dip dyed or painted in sections to get the gradients.

I also want to try this exercise with the New York Skyline exercise. I have almost finished weaving the 10 metre length in wool. I have just to order more of the "Rusticana" colour, marled brown, and weave the last 2 metres!

Tapestry in Bulgaria

Here is the next instalment of my retreat in Bulgaria.

As I have said, the retreat is owned by Silvia, a tapestry weaver and acrylic artist from Pazardzhik in Bulgaria.


On the left is one of Silvia's lovely tapestries. She uses only natural yarns in her work which has a very distinctive folk art feel.



Having spent several lunchtimes and evenings spinning my tapestry weft and weaving the tapestry, I eventually finished it on the afternoon before we left. On the right you will see it finished, but still on the loom.


This close up shows the unwoven warp. I wanted to keep the yellow of the sky quite soft, as it was in the design. So rather than spin more weft, I felt the unwoven warp would look much better.

Unfortunately, I'm not so sure about the white in the free areas! I can't quite decide whether to unpick the white, which was finger crocheted with the colours, or leave it as it is!

I have now just got to sew in the end that will work to the front, the warp ends at the bottom and secure the warp ends at the top, so as to keep the free warp straight and even.

Back From Bulgaria

Well we've got back from a very relaxing 2 weeks in Bulgaria, one week on the Black Sea Coast at Balchik, one week at Silvia Haralambova's Artists Retreat near the Rhodope mountains and two days in Sofia.

I've just got to tell you how lovely Silvia's Artists Retreat is and yes I did manage to spin the weft for a small tapestry and weave it too!


The Cottage at the Retreat.


Here is the equipment and materials I took, in my suitcase, to work with . I took white, black, red, yellow and blue fleece, my carders, a 25g Michael Williams top whorl spindle and my Andean Plying tool. Oh and some yellow 3ply tapestry warp!









This is the design I work on before I left. It is taken from a lovely print by Guiliana Lazzerini. I planned to weave a much wider piece, but realised that it would be too ambitious for the week I had, so decided to make it narrower and so folded back the right hand side.














The Studio is across the garden from the cottage and barbaque area. It was lovely and cool inside the building, a real retreat from the hot sun.

It was equipped with a frame loom, artists easel, sink, workbench, chairs, radio/CD/ tape player and a whole load of tapes.







I spent the first few days, usually just before and after lunch when it was very hot or in the evenings when it was much cooller, blending the coloured fibres into the colours to match my design.

You can see a few of the yarns I blended and spun using Michael Williams 25g spindle. I am sure you must think I go on too much about the spindle, but it's a real work horse.





The frame loom was warped with the yellow 3ply tapestry warp and here is the work in progress. You can see that I had planned to make the work wider, but changed my mind when I realised I would be push for time to finish as I was spinning all my weft yarn.

I will post more about the retreat and the tapestry soon.

Another month gone by!

Oh, dear, another month has gone by and I've not managed to post, but things seem to be settling down now.

Woolfest went really well. The dyes seemed to be well received and sales were good, so lets hope that now they are beginning to be know that will increase. I was teaching a Learn to Weave course last week which also went very well. One student from Leicester went home on Friday afternoon and was so excited about her weaving she spent the evening finishing a set of place mats! We took the Japanese student sight seeing on Saturday up into the Peak District of Derbyshire, which included the tapestries of Haddon Hall, the Carnival at Bakewell and a visit to the market and antique shops of Ashbourne. On Sunday we took her to the local Lavender Patch and Staunton Harold Craft Centre, where she purchased some fabrics for her hand made bags, then on to Heathrow for her 12 hour flight home!

I now have three weeks to get my house and studio back into order before I go on holiday to Bulgaria. I can't wait to spend a week on the Black Sea Coast, really chilling out, before we drive to an Artists Retreat in the foot hills of the Rhodope Mountains. Silvia, our host, and her husband are artists, Silvia being a tapestry weaver and acrylic artist. Their lovely retreat consists of a small cottage set in a walled garden with an artists studio across the courtyard. The studio has a couple of tapestry frames, so I am trying to design a small tapestry that I should be able to complete in a week! Of course, I am sure I will be distracted by the lovely countryside which we are told is very suitable for walking.

Must go, lots to clean and that design to complete.

Not much to say really, but!

I've been quite busy really, so not had much time to post, I had intended to post at least once a week, but I'm afraid I haven't managed that!

I have been teaching on a Monday evening and had to prepare for that, as well as preparing for 5 days of teaching design to spinners for Skylark Holidays.

Add to that preparing to take my dyes to Woolfest at the end of the month and preparing for a weaving course for Skylark Holidays at the beginning of July, too! I wish you could add a couple of hours into your day when they were needed, sometimes 24 aren't enough!!

We had the proof of the book back from the publishers, last week. It really is going to be stunning. For those of you who don't know, my friend, Jane Deane, and I have written a book called "Creative Spinning" for Gaia, part of the Octopus Publishing group. We were asked way back at the end of last September if we could write an inspirational "coffee table" book and were given 6 weeks to produce 30 projects and 15,000 words. Well that was really a tall order so we asked for an extension and they gave us an extra 2 weeks! Needless to say we managed it and the book went off to the technical editor, who did a fantastic job because we were then told it had been sold to an American publisher and they wanted a "how to" section, but still only 15,000 words!

I have to say that the photographs are stunning and the illustrations are really clear. I just hope that it is well received, I can't tell you how stressful it is to have such a tight brief and deadline, my neck and shoulders are still suffering 7 months later!

By the way, the book is one of a series of 4; Creative Spinning, Creative Weaving, Creative Natural Dyeing and Creative Felting.

More soon.

Sunday Dyeing!

I've just had a lovely day dyeing with a friend. We had pre-mordanted 2 kilo's of Blue Faced Leicester Chunky yarn the previous week and spend the whole of Sunday dyeing it!

I set to work starting an indigo hydrosulphine vat ready to dip some pre-dyed hanks.

My friend, Lorraine, got the dyeing started by half filling a stainless steel meat tin with one of my Pure Tinctoria dyes and put in 5 100g pre-mordanted and wetted "centre-pull" balls. This gives a nice effect because it only dyes the part of the ball in the dye and that is shaded as the dye penetrates towards the centre of the ball. She simmered the balls in the dye for 40 to 45 minutes, then washed and rinsed them.

Lorraine dyed 2 kilo's of Blue Face Leicester Chunky yarn in this way. As each batch was wash, rinsed and re-hanked, I folded them in half and dipped the ends in the indigo vat.


Here are the Red Lac and indigo dipped hanks hanging from my Sumach tree.
This batch of yarn is dyed with Myrobalan and then dipped in the indigo vat.

A bit of a dark picture, but this is 1 kilo of Purple Lac which had its hank ends dipped in the indio vat!

We had a great day and managed to dye 2 Kilo's of yarn, dip 3 kilo's of yarn and mordant 400g of yarn, have lunch and a good natter!

New York Skyline Update

I have been quite busy recently and have not had much time to post on this blog, but one of the things I have been working on was some swatches for the Computer Design Study Group design exercise I posted about earlier this year.

The studies I did on the computer were bases on a section of the New York Skyline, as seen on the right.

I particularly liked the small grey block effects of the window in the top to middle section. I also liked the relationship of the colours, the greys and browns with a little of the blue and turquoise (copper roof!). Another thing that struck me were the vertical oblongs.

With the computer I used a number of effects:- mosaic, wave, stained glass and combinations of these.

The mosaic effect gave me more of the block and vertical block feeling and concentrated the colours, which really brought home the colour proportion exercise we did earlier. I decided to "lump" some of the colours together, so that I ended with just 4 main colours:- sky blue, turquoise, a marl grey and a marl brown.

Lumping the colours together gave me proportions of 48% "Rustica" (marled brown with has the red browns, in as well as the dark and lighter browns), 24% "Silver" (marled grey), 13% "Fauna" (turquoise) and 5% "Sapphire" (sky blue). These yarns were purchased from J C Rennie (Smiths of Peterhead). They are a machine knitting yarn, but weave beautifully.

I warped my rigid heddle loom at 14 epi in a log cabin effect of blocks of 1 Rustica and 1 Sapphire x 4, 1 Fauna and 1 Rustica x 4, 1 Rustica and 1 Fauna x 4, (I Silver and 1 Rustica x 4, 1 Rustica and 1 Fauna x 4) x 2.

My first swatch (on the right) was woven as threaded.

Swatch 2 (above) was woven with 1 Rustica and 1 Sapphire x 4, 1 Fauna and 1 Rustica x 4, 1 Rustica and 1 Fauna x 4 and 1 Silver and 1 Rustica x 20. I wanted to try to capture the larger vertical blocks with this swatch.Swatch 3 (above) was woven with 1 Rustica and 1 Sapphire x 4, 1 Fauna and 1 Rustica x 4, 1 Rustica and 1 Fauna x 4 and (1 Silver and 1 Rustica x 4 and 1 Rustica and 1 Silver x 2) x 3. I wanted to try to capture the small blocks (the windows in the original) with this swatch.



Swatch 4 (above) was woven with 1 Silver and 1 Rustica x 4 and 1 Rustica and 1 Silver x 2 repeated the length of the swatch. I felt that the small repeat of 1 Rustica and 1 Silver x 2 was too small.


Swatch 5 (above) was woven with 1 Silver and 1 Rustica x 8 and 1 Rustica and 1 Silver x 4 repeated the length of the swatch and I feel this gives a much better representation of the square blocks and vertical blocks.

I have begun to develop this, using the waves and mosaic and wave computer manipulations. More to come!

Drop Spindles

Yesterday I was at the Derbyshire Guild Open Day, in Derby, UK.

Although I am a member of the Guild, I had been invited to sell my natural dye extracts. Also at the event was Michael Williams, a wood turner and fine woodworker from Sheffield. He was selling his drop spindles, niddy noddies, nostepinnes, diz, lucets, tapestry frames, amongst a lot of other lovely items.

I love spinning with a drop spindle and purchased a 25g spindle. Well, it is the best drop spindle I have ever used! I have been using my Bosworth for the last 5 years which, up until I tried this spindle, I loved.

This top whorl spindle spins like a dream, and goes on and on for ever. Before I knew it, I had spun quite a bit. It would be the perfect spindle for a beginner, they would not have to worry about it spinning back on it's self! In fact while I was trying it out and waxing lyrical about it, a lady who was a beginner purchased one, too. A little while later, I was watching her across the room and she was spinning beautifully. I just had to go over and congratulate her!

I also purchased a nostepinne and a diz. I ply with an Andean plying bracelet and thought the nostepinne would be a useful tool to make my yarn into balls. The diz, is something I haven't used before, but the Online Guild held a workshop last month on spinning the Bowmont Fleece and we were given the instructions for using one, so now I have a chance to try it out.

Ammonia Vat II

Well, it seems to be fermenting nicely, now! It's starting to smell very ripe and the colour of the liquor is beginning to change colour, towards a green. I have waited so long for this to happen, that I am beginning to get rather impatient. But I must not wreck the slow process by diving in with some yarn I want dyed blue! I must, I must be patient.

Ammonia Vat update!

Well! What can I say!!

I have only just posted the last post, if you see what I mean. It's been a draft for several weeks! I made the vat as described, but it wouldn't ferment! (Lots of exclamation marks, going on you will see, that's how frustrated I've been!!!)

I tried stirring it every day, to move the sediment from the bottom. I have "fed" it more sugar, more yeast. Not to mention that it is sitting on a heat pad to keep the temperature constant, as it had been rather cold here in Derbyshire in the UK.

Jim Liles book, The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing - Traditional Recipes for Modern Use, suggested that if it hadn't become active in 2 - 3 days it may never do so! Well, I didn't want to abandon all the effort, not to mention, indigo and ammonia, I had put into it. So, I have given it another chance, adding more sugar every day and more yeast over the last two days and Hay Presto! it's started to ferment. I suspect it was because the temperature has risen, here, over the last few days, to be rather unseasonly warm at night. This despite the heat pad, has maintained the temperature a little more consistently.

Let hope this continues, as I have usually used a yeast and washing soda vat, and only used this one because some one said they liked it better! It has been a very good learning curve, though!

Indigo Fermentation Vat

I have been busy organising my work room over the last week, so haven't had much time to do any real "work" such as weaving, spinning or dyeing. But I need to make an indigo fermentation vat so that I can dye some yarn next week. I have to start now, as it takes about 48 hours to work, so that it will be ready for Monday.

It's the ammonia/yeast vat that I am going to make and this is how I am going to do it:

• add 5 tablespoon of powdered Yeast and 5 rounded tablespoons of Sugar to 5 cups (200ml) warm water and leave for 2 hours.
• at the same time dissolve 5 level teaspoons of Indigo to 2 and 1/2 cups (500mls) Ammonia.
• After the 2 hours add the indigo and ammonia to the yeast-sugar mix in a large container and fill to about the 2 1/2 gallon mark. Cover with plastic wrap and use a rubber band to seal. (The fermentation can burst a rigid seal.)
• Leave to sit for several days in a warm place.
  

Sock Yarn

I have finally spun the wenslydale fibres that I dyed in the Monday Class a few weeks ago. I am very pleased with the result, so I am going to give the hank to my friend Rhiannon.

She has been helping me pack my dyes, so the hank is a reward for her hard work. When she makes the socks I will post the picture for you to see. In the mean time I am going to knit (or weave) a scarf in the hank I dyed at the same time, so it will match!

Pure Tinctoria Workshop

I had a great time on Saturday at my local guild of weavers, spinners and dyers, in Derbyshire. I ran a natural dye extracts workshop with my Pure Tinctoria Dyes. Each participant dyed three small hanks with one of the dyes, then modified them with iron water, copper water, citric acid and washing soda. They all went home with 70 colour swatches!

See them on the right.

The only colour we didn't have was blue. I use a fermentation vat for indigo, which takes about 48 hours to work and it doesn't travel too well. As you can see the range of colours is fantastic, I just have to add the indigo range to the swatches, so watch this space for the results!

Monday Class Part 2

I hope you enjoyed looking at the work of my Monday evening students, here is the next instalment!

Here is the space dyed yarn that Hazel produced.

On the right are the lovely reds and purples of Ann Broome's dyed tops.

On the left Lesley's second batch of fleece bubbling away.


These images just give you a flavour of the work that has been produced over the last two Mondays. I will post more images when the students have produced something from their skeins.

More soon.

Monday Class

The Monday spinning, weaving and dyeing class have been following the design workshop I developed for the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I encouraged them to use the ideas to develop a range of colour to use in an acid space dyeing workshop. I am so pleased with the work that I wanted to share it with you all.

This is an image from last weeks class.

Bottom fibres are Wenslydale and the hank above were both dyed in a similar bath by me!

The hank above were fibres dyed by Lesley, spun and plied with itself.

The little centre pull ball in orange was spun with beads, also by Lesley.





The bottom two hanks on the right were fibres dyed by Hazel. The bottom one was spun and plied with itself and the one above, spun and plied with a white singles.
The fibres at the top left were dyed by Anne Warwick.








The image on the left is Anne Warwicks design, colour study, dye record book, fibres and yarns.


I will post more of the results later, please call back to see them!

Rhiannon's

I have been rather busy lately, so not able to post so much.

Anyway, I went off to a trade fair in Birmingham, UK, with 3 friends. We went to help a friend who has a fabulous shop in our village, Willington, Derbyshire. It's called Rhiannon's and is a wool shop, chock full of lovely Colinette yarns. Rhiannon wants to add to the range, baby wool and a solid palate of colours, so hence we went to Birmingham. More about her new range in a later post.

Rhiannon is an inspiration to us all as she only started knitting just over a year ago, opened her shop in April 2006 and is now on a mission to get the whole of the Midlands knitting! She came to my spinning, weaving and dyeing class in October 2005 with the intention of learning to spin by Christmas that year. She took to it so well, she needed to do something with all that yarn she was producing, so asked her mum to teach her to knit. Now, the internet is a wonderful place and looking up knitting on Google, Rhiannon found that fabulous world of yarn and hasn't looked back. She is now on her third pair of socks!

Go Rhiannon!!!

More Design Excercises with Paper and Paint

Proportions
Mm, well now, what do I mean by proportions? Most of you choose a picture because it inspires you in some way, whether it's colour, texture, shapes, a combination of one, two or all three elements. Whatever is the trigger, it's very often the picture or section as a whole that is pleasing to the eye.
So if we look at just two of the elements, colour and texture, and work out the proportions of these, and if we stick to those proportions in weaving, knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc. we will have a very pleasing end product, whether we worked in stripes, checks, blocks or pictorally.

Stripes
Once we've worked out the proportions of texture and colour from out chosen photograph or painting, we can work on producing stripes. A series of stripe sequences can trigger all sorts of ideas in weaving, knitting and crochet, not to mention all the other textile crafts.

This series of stripes can be developed into a collage of stripes with texture as well as colour and even wrapping.












Opposite you will see a page from my sketch book. I have developed a series of stripes from the New York Skyline photograph. By working out the proportions of colour and texture I have produced a series of stripes, the last one has been developed into a yarn wrapping from the yarns (on the right) that I chose to match the colours in the original painting I did.

The yarn wrapping can be used as it is, as a stripe sequence for a piece of weaving or, if turned vertically, as a design for a scarf to knit or crochet, for example.

Those spinners amongst you, could try blending the basic colours, blue, yellow and red with black and white to spin a series of yarns which have much more life than those dyed the exact colour you want! More about this later!

Why not have a go.