365 : bedside table
Happy New Year! I’ve just had three seriously relaxing (& luxurious) days off. They were much needed! Everyone is abuzz about doing the 365 photo project and I’ve decided to join in. This is just the push I need to start taking more photographs this year, hopefully with people in them, sometimes. I wish I took better people photos. I know that Anabela is doing it, any one else out there embarking on the challenge?
Perhaps now is a good time to share a few other goals I have for the coming year…
- decorate. i’d like to spend more time working on projects for the house & shop. this includes acquiring and especially hanging more artwork. this also includes a very big project of re-doing the workroom’s couch in natural dyed fabrics. (with help from erin)
- journal. (offline) i used to spend a lot of time working on a visual diary and i really miss it. at the very least, i’ve started a project/fabric diary.
- grow. more herbs, vegetables and flowers. i also need to learn how to prune plants properly. i get scared to trim them and then they grow all wild and gangly.
- preserve. i just started getting into it last year with pickles, canning tomatos and jam, but there is so much more to try!
- quilt. especially hand quilting. i hope to start lots of fun quilting projects this year, but i especially want to finish this quilt. soon. ish.
- natural dye. i’m completely fascinated and want to do make all kinds of things from naturally dyed fabrics. i’ve also just learned about solar dyeing and it’s the most beautiful process!
Last night I dreamt about natural dyeing. Stirring big black pots of coloured liquid with fabric swirling all around. To be fair, before I fell asleep I was looking up information on logwood. Logwood is my favourite natural dye, it gives you shades of black, grey, purple and everything in between. Right now, I am in love with all of those colours. I can’t get enough.
I don’t have a “before” photo, but this button-down shirt used to be white. It’s just a simple fitted cotton shirt from Abercrombie. The problem was that it got some mysterious yellow stains after a washing that made it unwearable. Rather than toss it, I kept it hoping that someday I might be able to revive it back to life.
The second run of our Natural Dyeing class just finished and we had a logwood dyebath just hanging out at the workroom. After mordanting the shirt, I dropped it into the pot for a half hour. The resulting colour is a subtle greyish lavender and now the shirt is back in my closet.
I’ve been thinking about doing a quilt from natural dyed fabrics. There is something so incredible and rich about fabrics that are natural dyed. Even the slight unevenness of the colour adds to the charm.
I’d love to do a quilt with all different shades of logwood and a bit of pink cochineal thrown in. I’ve started a list of future quilt projects I hope to tackle. I have a feeling this list is going to grow quickly. You’ll find it at the bottom of My Crafty List of Things to Do.
Here it is, my indigo-dyed, shibori dress. I’m so in love with it.
When choosing the pattern for this project, I wanted to choose a fairly simple dress that had sleeves to show off the shibori pattern. Rather than try to cover the entire dress with the pattern, I focused on having it clustered around the bottom of all the pieces. To get the specific placement, I cut out all my pattern pieces out of white muslin, serged all the edges and did the shibori right on each dress piece.
The pattern is dress “V” from Stylish Dress Book 2. This is actually the first dress I’ve made from this book. I’m just finishing off a second one this week. Melinda made this particular dress a few months ago, so I already knew how cute it was. Choosing the contrasting fabric to go with it was difficult. I’m pretty sure I pulled every navy bolt of fabric off the shelf before finally settling on this floral print from Windham. I also made fabric covered buttons using this fabric for the placket. Having matching buttons always makes a project feel polished.
This dress was simple to make. It has lots of pretty gathering on the neckline and sleeves. I did mess up one part though. I failed to add seam allowance to the placket down the centre, so I had an extra big hole down the centre of the dress. To fix it, I just created a little centre pleat below the placket which brought together the edges of the placket hole. Mistakes often lead to creative solutions, so I always try to avoid getting too upset when I realize that I’ve done something ‘wrong’.
This is my favourite dress so far. I’m really, really proud of it. I definitely want to keep experimenting with natural dyeing fabrics to make more clothing. The soft, uneven texture looks so beautiful. I even have the beginnings of an idea to do a quilt with only natural dyed fabrics.
The last day of the Natural Dyeing class was all about indigo dyeing. I’ve always admired Japanese shibori dyeing, so I couldn’t wait to try it out in this class. Shibori is a method of creating patterns on fabric during the dyeing process by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or compressing it.
I got the idea to dye fabric for a dress from Melissa and pre-cut and serged all my pieces beforehand. This way I could plan exactly where the shibori would be located on the dress. I used a pure white muslin rather than a natural coloured one to keep the blue clearer. To create my design I placed screws (of various sizes and shapes) underneath my fabric and wrapped each one up tightly with heavy upholstery thread. This is a fairly labour intensive type of shibori, but I really liked the circular patterns it creates.
Deeper blue colours are achieved through repeated immersion into the dye vat. I was able to dip my pieces into the vat four times. It’s a bit hard to tell what the colour will dry as, it is always much darker when it’s wet. When I unwrapped all the screws, several of them had transferred rust marks onto the fabric which I actually really like. The fabric dried to a really nice blue and I even like the slightly uneven colouring, it gives it a vintage feel.
Shibori tights? Yes, please!
Next post – the finished dress!
Natural dyeing is something I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time. The idea of one day growing things in my backyard that I can harvest and then dye my own fabrics with is incredibly exciting. When I browse through seed catalogs, I’m always taking note of the plants that are candidates for my future dye garden. When I caught wind that Julie Sinden had lots of amazing experience in the field, I set the wheels in motion to set up a class as quickly as possible.
The class was pretty magical. It opened up a whole new world of possibility with textiles and sewing for me. Just the history alone of where these natural dyes came from is so interesting. Also, natural dyes are not exactly what I thought – you can’t actually use beets to dye fabric or yarn, as it won’t last and neither will turmeric. Pomegranate skins will give you a yellow-ish colour, not pink or red. Rhubarb root, mushrooms, oak leaves and walnut husks are all possible dyes that I’m interested in trying. I’m cooking up some future dyeing projects for myself already.
The last day of the class we did indigo dyeing which is a post all on its’ own.
Just look at all this yummy colour!
