Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Fabric and Fiber arts’ Category

It’s darn chilly outside today, like in the 50′s. North wind and all. Summer is officially over, and now we have the weather to prove it. Bleah! I love summer, wish it lasted longer.

Still had some yard work to do, mowing to be precise. Yesterday Ron was busy ALL DAY fixing my car, so we didn’t do any mowing. Yeah, yeah, I could have, but instead I puttered around, did some laundry and knitted on my purse. (more on the purse later)

Anyhow, today was mowing. Me on the old mower, Ron on the zero turn mower. I didn’t mow much. I was wearing sweat pants and a hat and a jacket, and it was cold. So I did some, and came back in. Besides, Ron can mow twice the area in half the time with the ZT mower.

Came in and decided to do some sewing. I’ve had a sweatshirt for years that I’ve been planning on turning into a jacket. The only thing stopping me was making the binding for it… you cut off all the ribbing stuff, cut up the front, and then cover all the raw edges with a fabric binding. I have some lovely fat quarters, but I knew that one would never be enough to make that much bias tape, so I dug into my fabric stash and found a larger bit of fabric. Next up, find that website that tells how to make continuous bias tape from a rectangle of fabric…. oh, I’ve got that saved as a pdf, lol!

So, first to make the bias tape. I squared off the ends of the fabric, cut the selvage off, and followed the instructions to make a parallelogram. (bias tape instructions here: http://pir8.freeservers.com/quilting/CBT/) Marking it was tough, I ended up using a white colored pencil as my dressmakers pencil kept breaking.

Sewed it all up, cut it… and I have over 9 yards of tape, which should be plenty for the jacket. I made it 4.25 inches wide, too, so as to have a nice wide binding.

Pinned it to the sweatshirt, starting in the middle of the bottom back. Started sewing and got to the corner and realized that I don’t remember how to make a mitered corner any more. Back to the internet. Gotta love it, found lots of instructions, some which were bleah. :) Got all the tape sewn to the main body of the shirt, the sleeves I’ll do later when I make the pockets.

Well, by this time my eyes are getting tired. So I turned off the iron after pressing what I’d done… and shut off the sewing machine and extra light I need. Besides, I have to change thread colors to finish sewing down the bias tape… and I’m not sure where any more thread is. Red was okay for sewing it on… but won’t be okay for stitching in the ditch because of the color of the shirt. The fabric binding doesn’t really go very well with it, but I thought it would go okay from memory, lol!

I thought the shirt was greener. It’s a turquoise sort of color, but not as dark as the turquoise in the fabric. Oh well. Have a look for yourself… and never mind that the shirt looks sky blue, it’s NOT. I hate CF lighting.

Anyhow. It’ll be okay… I still don’t miter corners very well, but I’m making this to wear to work when it gets chilly. Shorter sleeves than most jackets come with, to stay out of my way while I’m working. The shirt is well washed… I’ve maybe worn it twice, but I’ve washed it a lot… every time I was feeling ambitious about turning it into a jacket and then giving up because of the matter of the binding. Silly… the binding was easy!

Now, about that knitting. I’m making another felted purse. Didn’t order enough of one color of yarn, so to make up for that I’m making the stripes in it of the other colors wider. It’s gonna be an odd one, anyhow. Purple main color, lime green, pink, and sapphire blue for the stripes. I’ll probably make the handle out of one or two of the stripe colors. Really disliking the pattern, I should have paid no attention to some of it, but I didn’t, and tried to follow it even though I was adding rows. First off all… something I didn’t even notice until well into the flap of the purse… as in nearly done with it. I notice the instructions are calling the knit side the right side. What side is that, anyhow? I’m doing a stockingette stitch, and one side is smooth and the pattern shows up well. I thought that would be the purl side… because it looks smooth. Anyhow, I hate having to switch between knitting and purling, even just in rows. I purl horribly, and always feel like I need one more hand, lol! All my stitches are carried over on the other side, so that to me is the wrong side. I know I’m just confused… the pattern wouldn’t show up on that other side, but still, it threw me off for a bit.

I get the flap done, and need to add on stitches to make the main body of the purse. So I do, and start knitting em, and join it into a round and realize that the flap is going to be backwards. Rip it out, to where I think it needs to be, add the extra stitches again, knit em again…. and realize I’ve just done exactly the same thing over! AUGH! So… instead of joining into a round, I turned and went back the other direction before joining. I have one row of backwards stitching in there… but at least the flap won’t be on backwards! I will have to join that extra bit of the added stitching, too… but I figure I can fix that when I attach the handles later, just use some of that yarn to sew it up.

Now that I’m knitting in the round, the rest of the purse will go a lot faster. Well, it will if I don’t get sidetracked by sewing something I’ve been meaning to do for at least 5 years, LOL!

I’d post a photo of the purse as it is now, but for some reason the photo uploader is not working properly. I can upload, but can’t scroll down to where I need to be to insert into post. Had to do that one photo manually… which actually means copy and paste the html from another post and change the important bits so that you don’t get a kitten photo when you are expecting to see a bit of fabric. :)

Until next time….

hugs,
Vyx

No good excuses, other than I’ve been busy and/or tired.

These photos, btw, are all courtesy of my friend Jan, who not only took photos but also cropped and/or resized them. You aren’t missing anything…. I took nearly the same photos but from a slightly different angle. Decided because there are so many to post them as thumbnails, but they aren’t large photos, so click away if you want to see better views.

Our lovely model told me she prefers to be called Liv… and she is 8, I believe. She was very fun to work with, and very impatient with the rather rapid dye process. It was 104 the day of the dye party, hottest day of the summer I think. Great for the dye process, but not so great for the humans! :)

Okay, so on to photos. Not all of these were dyed at the party… I had some leftovers from my business and gifted them to Liv.
This first dress is one we dyed at the party. I should have brought more pink and purple dye with me!  Second dress in this line is a modified adult t-shirt.  I took lots of extra shirts with me, and Liv ended up with all the smaller sized ones.

Next three photos are a dress left over from my business… not very girly colors, but a great play dress anyhow.  Fourth photo is Liv with a silk scarf that I’d done and given to Jan (at least it looks like one of mine!) and she gave to Liv for the modeling session.  :) Same pink and purple dress as above.

Then we have Liv in her pink and purple again, and the other play dress. Repeat of the play dress and then one of the t-shirts we did at the party. We were getting a kick out of all the posing and such, btw.

Next three photos are the same shirt, but different poses. :)

That modified t-shirt at the top…. we decided that to make a plain old shirt more girly it either needed a belt or better sleeves. So Jan went in, got a needle and thread and gathered up the sleeves a bit. That’s probably also when the silk scarf came out… models NEED accessories you know! Oh, also pictured in some photos: the knitted cap Jan made with some yarn I dyed.

After the modeling show was over, Liv put her play clothes back on and went and played in the sprinklers with the dog. It was that hot, I was tempted to do it myself, lol!

Earlier, while we were waiting on the dye to cure (only an hour or so in that heat) we all went out to the bead store and then to get some gelato. The bead store in that town is so great…. and the owner wanted to know about having her own tie dye party. I gave her some information before I came home, but haven’t heard from her again. Which is okay, it would be a long drive for me and I’d probably have to take a day off work to do it. The gelato was fantastic… I’d never had any before and it was hard to choose two flavors, but I did and then thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Seriously super fantastic.

It was a great visit with my friend Jan, and she got me hooked on Zentangles, too. Gotta remember to bring my own beer with me, though, so I don’t drink all of Chuck’s beer! Next time… :)

Well, I have more stuff to write about other than my little vacation trip, but I think I’ll save it for another post. Sorry for making everyone wait for the photos and such!

hugs,
Vyx

Just one photo to give you a tease…

I will try to get to this over the weekend…. we had a lovely model to show off all the stuff she got to take home. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

Gee, it would help if I’d think of things to write about as I am doing them, so that I can take photos!

Duh. Anyhow, because today turned into a rainy day and I didn’t have anything else I needed to do I decided to dye some shirts.

Little short excursion into shirts for a bit here… I’ve been trying to buy Fruit of the Loom pocket tee’s for Ron for a while now. In white, they have to be white. Walmart USED to carry them, but now all they have are colors. So, last weekend I did a search on Amazon, came up with a few… but more importantly I happened to look at a “sponsored link” on the page. JiffyShirts.com was the link and so I checked it out. Well, howdy! They have the FOTL shirts I want, and reasonably priced… and SUPER reasonably priced shipping. So I ordered 15 of them. I ordered on Saturday and they were here on Tuesday. Considering that they only ship during the week, that was astounding!

Today I looked at some of their other shirts. They carry the same ones I buy from Dharma, only cheaper, not to mention way less shipping. I think I’ve found a new shirt supplier. Dharma is in California, I can get dyes from closer so less shipping… I may not be ordering much from Dharma this year.

Another thing I did today was this morning I went to Walmart. Clearance is right by the pool supplies and I knew I needed Soda Ash. Guess what was just opposite the pool supplies? FOTL pocket tees in white. Four shirts in a pack for $9.50. I got the only two packages in Ron’s size that they had. Sheesh. Well, at least now he won’t be running out of shirts for a long while! LOL!

So, on to dyeing. First, we prewash the shirts. Hottest water, some Synthrapol or laundry detergent, and sometimes I put some soda ash in the wash, too. You just want to make sure that any manufacturing chemicals or dirt are off the fabric. Leave the fabric damp.

Mix your dyes up. For cotton fabrics and shirts you want Procion MX dyes. Cover your work area with newspaper and wearing a dust mask and gloves, mix the colors you want to use. I fill canning jars devoted to dyeing about 1/2 full of lukewarm water and then add the dye powder to that. I guess you are supposed to add the water to the dye, but I like to measure the water first and then dump the dye in. Some people advise to paste up the dye too, but I never have. Stir, stir, stir and then stir some more. Various colors can be hard to dissolve. Some never completely dissolve and can leave tiny dye spots on your fabric. Fuchsia is a problem color, so I sometimes filter it with a piece of nylon stocking. Didn’t bother today. You want 2 to 4 teaspoons of dye per cup of water for most colors… I use a VERY heaping teaspoon to sort of standardize my colors. It’s best to weigh the dye, but that is also a lot of trouble and I think the less time the dye powder has to float around, the better.

I use various things to dye IN for LWI. Ice Cream buckets work great for most things, but I also use wide mouth canning jars, plastic canisters and various saved jars that are large enough to take a shirt or two. All are dedicated to dyeing, never used for anything else. You want your fabric or shirt to fit fairly tight in the container, but still have room to be adding liquid. Ice cream buckets are pretty perfect. Free, too, and we don’t even eat ice cream that much… I get em from Ron’s family.

So, we’ve got a couple of damp shirts squished into an ice cream bucket. Now comes the fun and messy part of it. Pour dye on top of the fabric in random patterns. If you are patient and don’t want to make much of a mess, then foam brushes work great for applying the dye to fabric. That’s what I use when I’m doing classic tie dye. For most of the shirts I do in buckets, though, I just dump some out of the jar I mixed in. It can be messy, with drips down the side of the jar but I keep a damp rag handy. Two colors, sometimes more, but you do want to pick colors that will play well together because they are going to get mixed around on that shirt.

It takes about 1/2 to 1 cup of dye per average shirt for nice bright colors. Let it sit for a while, and see if it looks like dye has migrated to the bottom. If not, you can add more dye to it or just some water to help things along, but that will dilute the dye a bit. You do want to see color at the bottom of your bucket, but NOT the shirt swimming in liquid. I have added dye/water to about 1 inch in the ice cream bucket, but usually have a lot less than that.

You can let this sit for a few hours, or just an hour or so depending on how much dye and water you’ve added. It can be hard to judge for a beginner, so, to make sure your color has migrated enough you can put on gloves and carefully pick up bits of fabric. Some bits look white? That’s fine, it’ll make your colors pop. Major areas are white? You need more dye and/or water to help the dye move along. It will move some more after you fix it, so don’t get too carried away. We aren’t going for solid colors… LWI is way too interesting to just get one plain color.

After the dye has migrated to your satisfaction, it’s time to fix it. Mix 1 cup of soda ash (sodium carbonate) to one gallon warm water. Stir until completely dissolved… which can take a while as it wants to lump up. Pour into your dye bucket until your shirts are completely submerged…. or would be, if they didn’t float. Don’t stir or anything else! And don’t worry if it looks all muddy at this point. You won’t use the whole gallon of soda ash water unless you’ve got 4 or more shirts in buckets and jars, but it won’t go to waste. It keeps forever and is actually a good addition to the washer when you are washing something really grimy.

I cut the rims of the ice cream bucket lids off and use the center piece as plates to hold down my shirts… using other jars full of water on top for weight. You can also just use a jar of water… or even another bucket with some water in a pinch. Be careful not to put too much weight in and overflow everything all over the place! (Messy is one reason I do most of my dye work outside)

Now, we let the buckets sit. A few hours if you are impatient, overnight if you are not. Temperature is important. For dyeing with MX dyes you always want to be at least 70 degrees F. Higher is better. The warmer it is, the less time you need to let it sit… so outside in the sun on a summer day, then an hour or two is plenty. Cooler and we want to let it sit longer. Or warm it up. I have been known to put buckets of shirts into the microwave after adding the soda ash fixer, then nuking for 30 seconds at a time until it feels hot. Then let sit until completely cool. If your house is cooler than 70, a heating pad under the bucket or jar is a safer way than the microwave of keeping things warm. :)

The soda ash has to migrate all through the fabric and dye mixture so that the dye will bond with the fabric. But it tends to do that pretty quickly if your container is large enough to add soda ash water until the fabric floats. If, like I did today, you have a ladies shirt squished into a quart jar…. well, you probably want to let that sit for the full overnight thing. It’s always better to let it sit as long as possible… that way the dye will completely react and wash out the excess better. If you’ve ever dyed with protein dyes, using MX dyes will be a shock… the dye comes out, comes out, comes out. You think it’s never going to quit, but it does if you rinse properly. Acid dyes bind with the fiber in the heat…. we saw my dye pot go clear. MX dyes never do that… the water is always going to have unbound dye in it.

So, once the shirts have set in the dye and then the soda ash solution long enough to react… it’s time to rinse. First you rinse in cold water. This is just to get the soda ash out of the shirts. I did it in the bathtub this time, but you can just dump your shirts into the washer filled with cold water and run the cycle. I like to rinse first in a bucket…. rinse, rinse… let soak a bit, rinse some more and then squeeze out.

After the first rinse, you wash. HOT water and detergent/Synthrapol. This is where Synthrapol is better… it pushes the excess dye out of the fabric and keeps it from landing back on the fabric. Hot water is better for getting the excess dye molecules away, too. It’s all about chemistry, and I’m not a chemist…. so I trust the ones who are. :)

Wash in hot, rinse in cold. A batch of 6 shirts or so is not a full load, but I usually run the washer like it is. If I’ve got more shirts dyed, I rinse them better before dropping them into the washer. You will probably find that you need to run 2 full cycles of the wash to get the excess dye out. I usually then turn it to rinse one more time and put in some fabric softener. Soda Ash is hard on fabrics and can make them feel rough if you don’t do a final rinse with softener.

Then you dry… and ready to wear!

If you have any questions, please ask! I know I can skip around a lot.

Hugs,
Vyx

I liked my little blue purse so well that I thought I’d do another one.

This time changing up the pattern a bit, make the purse a bit larger and different colors.

I decided on pink and black. Had to mail order the fun fur, as no one carries it locally. Managed to find wool in the right colors at Hancock Fabrics… the only local store with a good selection of wool!

This is going to be my last knitting/felting project for a while. I need to do some stamping as I’m way behind on rak backs.

Anyhow, before and after photos…

Before felting… and then the bottom before felting, so you can see that this one is rectangular rather than square.

Just out of the washer!

And finally… with the little blue purse. Quite a size difference!

I guess I’m going to have to take it to work with me Monday, to show it off… then call Candice to come get her new purse. :)

Hugs,
Vyx