dyeing

Today will be probably be the last day of blogging before I go on my holidays.

I dyed these silk pieces for costuming the doll I am doing in Patti's online class. Somehow the colours are not what I wanted them to be. I think I will use the one with some green in it. I will probably trim off some of that yellow. I would have liked some red in it too but now I have run out of that colour as I made the purple with it. I should have got more of this dye but since I don't know much about dyes I decided I would try them out with starter packs. The silk catches the dyes very well and I used Colorhue dyes as Patti suggested.

Tomorrow I am off to Italy and then to India. I am looking forward to some warm weather. It has been freezing the last few days over here.

Procion dyes

I made the dyes according to well nearly according to the instructions. Made the chemical water first which was a mixture of 1 and a quater tsp of urea plus 1 and half tsp of calogen in 1 litre of warm water. This mixture can be kept for quite a while. Then a solution of 500g of soda ash with 1 litre of hot water. This mixture has to be used on the same day. Take a quater of a tsp of dye and make a paste with little water. Add a ratio of 60 to 40 of the chemical water and soda ash water to it. I might be slightly off in my measurements as I can't remember exactly. I had to half the quantity , as this measurement was too much for a small doll. Infact even when I halfed it, it was too much. So that is why my measurements sort of went a bit haywire and the dye became lighter than intended. But when I added a bit more of it it was brilliant. The colours are really bright. Cotton really takes well to this dye. It just ran into each other and blended. Then I let it dry and once it was dry I heat set it in the oven at 225 degrees for 20 minutes. Actually I only left her in it for 10 minutes as I felt my oven was too hot and I was scared I might burn her. I also remembered just in time that she had wooden joints! It was begining to get a bit brown. I felt that since she was going to be only a doll that should be enough. You can also iron her to set the colours or put her in the dryer to set the colours.

Thanks for the tip about the embossing Judi and I hope the above was clear enough. Now I am looking forward to dying my silks.

Patti's class DIP

Here is my Doll in progress which I am making with Patti Culea's on line class.
Today I got to work on her. Had fun dyeing her. I have never dyed a doll before. I used the Procoin dye and got fed up of trying to figure out the proportions to make up all the solutions. I guess I was being a bit lazy as I mixed the dyes not strictly as instructed, so at first the colours came out a bit light so had to add more colour to make it bright it turned out ok. Next time I will use Dy na flow colours which don't need any mixing and are not messy. I then used Lumiere for stamping and which came out fine. I had lots of problems with embossing. I either burnt the glitter or blew the glitter away. I think I must have got more glitter on me than on the doll! Well I am slowly getting the hang of it though. Perhaps I will try paint than the glue for the glitter next time.

Heat it up!

After seeing Judi and others playing with the heat gun I decided to go and get one for myself. I don't know when I will be able to play with it but I have it with me yeah! I seem to be collecting lots of things to play with buy not playing with them ah the story of my life.

Here is something I have that has been sitting and doing nothing for oooh perhaps for ages. Judi you are an inspiration to me. You jogged my memory and made me search for this high and low and I guess, I will have to make her up now. Didn't I say we think alike sometimes LOL! I don't have arms for her though but I could do something really weird LOL! Perhaps I should send her to you. You will definitely get her finished before I will that is for sure.

Quite in my corner

Haven't written anything after my free pattern. By the way I have uploaded it in my website http://www.moonbeamworld.com as well. I don't think I will be able to do much now as I am going away to Sorrento for a few days during Easter period and then I will be going to India until the end of April. Have lots to sort out too. I will take something to work on when I am in India. Hopefully a doll.
Have been a bit down since yesterday. The workplace is getting a bit of a pain to work in. Have some major decisions to make. Hope they will be the right ones.
I will try and stitch up something to work in the plane that way I hope I will work away my anger too.