Week 2 of Spinning and Dyeing Class

I got really sick and missed the second class meeting of my Spinning and Dyeing class.

From the sounds of it, I missed the chemical dyeing and some spinning.

Also, it sounds like the teacher wasn't clear on exactly what to do with the chemical dyes, leaving out steps and ingredients. :/

Just Because

Pirate Festival sewing

I made Matt a pirate shirt from Butterick's B4486 pattern, top right corner. I made him some pants that I pretty much winged since I didn't have a pattern. I screwed up a bit but they worked fine. I also made him a pouch to keep stuff in since the pants didn't have pockets.

I was able to get these two done in time for this years NorCal Pirate Festival.

Shirt WIP	Finished shirt and pants

Close-ups of the shirt, I'm quite proud of it:

Spinning and Dyeing

This last Saturday I started a Spinning and dyeing class. It's from 9 am to 4:30 pm every Saturday to August 1st, with 4th of July off.

Our first class was a bit over whelming but was fun. We had our introduction then we started spinning on drop spindles and mordanting some 100% wool yarn.

The mordants we used where copper, tin, alum and iron. We won't get to use the 5th mordant, chrome, for a week or two.

Our text books are Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn by Maggie Casey and Natural Dyeing by Jackie Crook. I like the dyeing book, only glanced at the spinning book.

We also have an optional book, The Craft of Natural Dyeing: Glowing Colours from the Plant World by Jenny Dean. I skimmed through it during class and it looked like a pretty good book.

More on the class next week.

Top is finished

Here is the second garment I finished for clothing class. It's made from a crape knit fabric.