Going away

I have been away for a couple of days, into the hills. It was beautiful weather, there was no working tv, no radio and no newspaper (actually, I did buy one but when I start to read it I decided I didn't need to pollute my mind anymore). It was a wonderful time away.

I had been with some friends the day before and we had been going to do some sun dyeing but the sun didn't shine!! So we did paper eco dyeing. However, the sun shone while I was away and I had the makings still with me. I got out the dyes, found plenty of leaves, flowers and grass seeds and decided to try it anyway.
I had three different sorts of fabric. As I wasn't sure what I was doing, or why, I only did small pieces for sampling.
The information for the sun dyes I had, from KraftKolour, said that it was for cotton and silk, so I put away the polyester fabrics and just used the cotton and silk - at least, I hoped it was just cotton and silk. I haven't actually washed them yet as I had to iron them and then wait for 24 hours, so that is a task for tomorrow. Here's hoping the colour doesn't wash out.

I used a piece of quilting fabric that had been screen printed. It was interesting to see that the screen printed part didn't really dye - I had found that out previously with some procion dyeing. But it didn't really do much with the sun printing either, maybe because I didn't use strong resists, I only used some grass seeds and a few leaves. So that piece was a bit of a dead loss - but it might be useful in some patchwork and I will keep it in case. I also used a variety of colours and it might have been better to have used less colours.

Another piece I used was gauze cotton. It worked well. I actually ended up with two pieces as I had dye left over after my first experiment. The second gauze piece was there, the left-over dyes were there and I was getting tired. So I just scrunched up the second piece, dipped it into the various dyes and ended up with a rather green piece of fabric. It had also wrinkled, so that affected the dyeing too. But it actually has some of the most interesting designs. It was the last piece I did, so I probably had been learning as I went along. I am going to do some machine sewing and see if I can develop some of the images further.

I can see a blue wren here, just waiting for me to develop the image further.

The grass seeds came up ok on the gauze too. I do like grass seeds!

Another couple of pieces were of homespun cotton, also suitable for quilting. They have given me some interesting parts that I many use, or I may just put them in my ever-increasing stash.

However, I enjoyed the exercise and will try some new ideas in the near future. Summer is coming after all. I have to find some positives in all that sunshine and warm weather.