Week 4 of Spinning and Dyeing Class

First half of the day was spent at the local county fair watching fleeces being juged. We missed that due to certain circumstances and arrived at school when everyone was coming back.

Dye Pots:
Cutch - heartwood of tree - browns and rusts
Merigold - petals - yellow, orange, brown
Henna - leaves of shrub - tans
Cochineal - Stored fluid from dried insect husks - Pretty pinks and purples
Indigo - leaves of shrub - blues


I also tried to do some synthetic dye on a cotton/spandex blend. It turned out much lighter then I thought it would.

Edit: turns out there where a few steps I wasn't aware of that our teacher left out, like I was supposed too steam/heat it. I might over dye it, I might leave it, I'm still not sure about the color.

Week 3 of Spinning and Dyeing Class

We had an off-campus meeting with the local spinning guild. Our teacher only brought a few wheels and no spindles. I completely forgot to bring my cheap wobbly spindle, so I didn't get to practice spinning and ended up really bored.

I did work on my mohair shawl a bit, and glanced around when the guild had their silent auction.

Our teacher was thinking we'd maybe go back to class after, but most of the students vetoed that. So at when the meeting was over, we came home.

We lost out on a day of dying and me trying to learn how to spin.

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.