Stashing Up in the Wind

I have finally got around to doing some dyeing for myself :) After watching all the beautiful colours appear in this years workshops, I have been itching to stock up my own stash of fabrics. I have bought some new colours this year too and have been dying to try them. Monday dawned sunny and only a little breezy, so I rang Helen to change our dyeing day as this looked like the only decent day we would get before the winds returned.

The first day I tried a new blue and an old red in this two colour gradation, lovely combinations but still no real purples.

The some purples using two old colours and some new greens, which work very nicely together. I left these in the pots over night as I thought I might continue dyeing the next day.

Just as the weather man predicted, about 9.30, after I had set myself up for another day of mixing and rinsing, the wind came back with a vengeance, but with the roof vibrating and things flapping and banging, I kept going, only ducking back into the house when I thought I might be in mortal danger.

The previous day Helen had dyed up a 21 colour wheel and got some lovely results. I haven't dyed up one of these for a long time and thought it would be a good idea to try out some of the new colours. I then remembered I hadn't dyed up any threads for a long time either, so a hunt out in the back room also found some muslin, scrim / cheesecloth and a nice cotton bamboo thread I had bought ages ago and forgotten all about. All these went into my 21 yogurt pots along with my 1/2 meters. What I really like about this particular colour wheel is that it gives you some tertiary colours too. Here you can see my three primaries, secondaries and tertiaries.

And here with the extra bits of muslin and scrim.

Here's the whole lot with the threads. Amazing to think all that came out of 21 yogurt pots.

Here's a close up of the bamboo, cotton thread, the colours are more vibrant than shown here, I'm a hopeless photographer!!

Wednesday morning and the wind was still howling, but I wanted to try some multi coloured pieces using black and two primaries and in the new colour ways to go with those above.

Here is just a piece from each fabric, I love ironing these up as each one is so unique and contains little pictures, some tell a whole story :)

So three days of dyeing and my stash is well and truly re-stocked along with some other fabrics and threads. I have work right up until christmas and the school holidays are often too hot to dye so this was my last chance to get some good dyeing days in, the wind was a bit of a pain in the rear, but great for drying, took at least 4 minutes!!