Time flies when you're being creative!

We've been slow to share our activities lately, but we've been meeting as usual, and what exciting times we've been having!

Some of us got together last month to have a dyeing day. We used Drimarene K, a kind of fibre reactive dye like Procion. The advantage over Procion is that it remains stable in water for months, so unused dye can be stored, while the dye molecules of Procion dye begin to bond with the water molecules after just an hour or so. We all brought different kinds of things made from natural materials to dye, and the results have been as individual as always.

Bev dyed one of her linen serviettes and some damask linen. She concertina-pleated the serviette and dip-dyed it in ink and lavender. It had some embroidery as well as the lace border, which gave an interesting effect.

 The damask is much more subtle. It's hard to see in the photo, but you can see a little, on the left hand side, how the patterned damask surface took the dye slightly differently. The piece was space dyed  to give the colour variations.

She also dyed some quilters' cotton, using the space dyeing method.

I really like the muted colours on these pieces and the pattern is amazing.

 

Her remaining fabrics were silk twill. These two were space dyed again:

 The third piece was plaited:

I'd call this one her piece de resistance, if it weren't that she also dyed a white cotton blouse.

Isn't this beautiful? I really love the combination of ombre shading and the pattern at the hem.
Maz was working with cheesecloth, which she'd used for dyeing before, at a workshop.

She did a lot of stitching on her cloth beforehand, to get these amazing patterns.

She also dyed a cotton batiste scarf:

This scarf is incredibly gorgeous to wear! It may seem counter intuitive, but it feels fabulous on your skin and I think a few of us considered slipping it quietly into our bags.There was some discussion about whose clothing it suited the best!

 

This scarf is silk jacquard and, like Bev's damask, the dyeing has enhanced the pattern in the weave.

 

She also dyed some silk habotai scarves. On this one, she was experimenting with using very pale colours, rather than the intense shades she'd been using, for space dyeing. It's very subtle and interesting.

These are more of her pre-stitched dyeing. It's labour intensive but you can see the value of it on these silk scarves, can't you?

She dyed some cotton cloth as well, with space dyeing.

They're all beautiful but I especially love that last one. It was dyed by rolling the cloth around a piece of string, and then ruching the fabric long the string and tying the ends together. It's given such a complex pattern.

These silk georgette scarves of Tricia's were plaited before being dyed with a syringe.

This process works really well on light fabrics and results in three very similar scarves. The three below were done with the same technique, but one of the scarves was silk chiffon, not georgette. Isn't it interesting how the chiffon has taken the dye very differently?

 The colours are much brighter and the separation between the colours much more distinct, even though all three scarves were dyed at the same time in the same way.

Sher also dyed some silk tissue. This is very sheer silk, often used as a base for felting.

Both Tricia and Nola also over-dyed some scarves that had originally been dyed with natural materials. Sometimes, depending on the plants used, these scarves can come out quite pale or beige. Here's Tricia's, cheered up with some of the fibre reactive dye...

... and these are Nola's:

 

The third one had been dyed with blocks, giving the chevron pattern. Over-dyeing with turquoise darkened the brown but made the lighter chevrons more obvious.

Nola was mostly interested in dyeing cotton socks.

 

 Some are adult size; others are for primary school kids.

This tee was space dyed and then stitched to yield the mokume or "wood grain" pattern over one shoulder. The pattern is quite fine and doesn't show up well in the photo.

How different they all are! Most importantly, we had a fun day doing it.

Challenge works - all together

I mentioned earlier that we've been working on individual challenge pieces. As a group, we're pretty wayward in our work patterns, so due dates are a work of fiction and works have come drifting in, at all different times. We thought you might like to see them all together.

Basically, we took turns to choose paint chip cards from the hardware shop, sight unseen. Each person chose four, but they could decide to use just three of them, if they preferred. Each person could throw back one card and choose again, mostly because paint colours tend towards the muted and it's pretty hard to make an interesting piece of art with four shades of grey brown!

Carol used three of her colours to knit this scarf. She found it very hard to match her colours in cloth, so yarns seemed a better bet.

Maz was working on a background she painted to match her paint chip cards. She decided to make a concertina book to hold the postcards we swap each month. She machine stitched over her painted fabric and a layer of fine net. The cloth wraps around the book pages. This is the front cover..

..and this is the back.

 

Here it is opened out, so you can see the whole image...

..and showing the postcard pockets.



It's a great way to display the group's work!

 

Helen made one of her bowls, using her signature rug canvas work.

It's hard to photograph it to do it justice. Suffice it to say that another Fibrecircle member promptly did a deal with Helen and the bowl went home with her instead!

Jan made a book cover using her paint chip colours. Here is is, with the colours, while she was working on it,

and here it is finished.

In many ways, Jan's colours were the hardest, because she had so many

similar ones. The result is a beautiful piece of work, though.

 

Nola decided to make a handbag in her paint chip colours. She used embroidery threads, as an easy way to match the colours, on fine pin wale cord, with some quilting cottons for contrast.

Her colours, in addition to the dull red and the turquoise, were a mid green and walnut brown.



I'm not sure what our next joint effort will be. We usually do at least one a year, as well as our own individual work.

February #2

On Saturday, Fibrecircle will be showing and selling some of our work at the NSW ATASDA meeting at Epping from 10am. Here's just a taste of what we have to show you.

Bev's beautiful badges, made from old lace, silk snippets and hand embroidery:

Tricia and Nola's scarves, including these new ones that you won't have seen here:

Fat quarters  of quilters' muslin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...plus all sorts of other lovely things, like the dyed socks and t-shirts and Nola's hand painted kids' tees.

Helen has beautiful gift tags and embroidered rock paperweights, Carol has bookmarks ...

 

well, you'll just have to come along and see, won't you?