fragile heart colourful and quirky wool and felt accessories

handmade felt

Tuesday 24 April 2012

a day to dye for.....

Wahay!!! reached over 1,000 page views this week. Thank you to everyone who has had a little look here.
Such a lovely day yesterday, bright and breezy, perfect for having a go at some dyeing. I am obsessed with cotton scrim at the moment and couldn't wait to see how I could transform a plain piece into something more exciting. My friend Jayne (Jayne Hewison Textile Designer) offered to show me the ropes. This is how we did the first piece.... 

 ... soaked the scrim well in water, transferred to a dye pot of  pinky-coloured dye and left on a low heat on the stove. Rinsed and squeezed out the scrim and layed it flat on the table. Mixed up small containers of  blue and purple dye of varying intensity. Splodged (technical term) and brushed dye on randomly.

 
 Rinsed well again
 and hung out to dry
 in the warm breeze
 Here is violet sporting the finished article
And this is another piece with more subtle colour tones. Think I could become hooked on dyeing. Thanks for a fabulous day Jayne !!!

Friday 13 April 2012

introducing violet...

 finally I have one... after months of searching charity shops in the hopes of finding an interesting, old battered one (no chance!, everyone kept telling me...and they were right!!), I had an idea to ask for one as an early birthday present. So now I have my own tailors dummy (thank you Jayne for letting me borrow your Betty for weeks at a time), her name is Violet and I just love draping things over her.
 Here she is draped with some gorgeous cotton scrim I bought from Raes Rags on Etsy. I just love the colours she has used to dye this piece... 
 so I was inspired to make a piece of felt using similar colours and then made these flower brooches.
 Here's Violet again, sporting a necklace I made this week.
And, still on a pupley, pinky, turquoisey theme I made this piece of felt yesterday using oddments of silk and cotton and made several heart brooches from  it....

....and embellished them with a few more scraps and a bit of needle felting.
 Hope everyone enjoyed a lovely Easter break!!