New crafting video uploaded despite audio alerts!

Don’t you love it when you’ve promised yourself an early night and have everything nicely uploading to YouTube, for a smooth publish, including subtitles and a nice little hand-made thumbnail – then listening to the newly published video you realise some of the background music is more foreground music? When you listen to the video, you are suddenly jarred into alert!!

Gawd.  So what do you do?  Stomp around swearing with a-gnashing-of-teeth?

I sure felt like it.  But would be the point of that?  I’d end up with high blood pressure and a few years of enamel ground down off my molars, and I’d still have to re-upload the video.  I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone watching it with headphones to have their eardrums blasted into their amygdalas.

So, deep breath, stoic expression, shuffle around on typing chair and off we go again.

Back into Premiere Pro, fine-tuning the audio gain, re-compressing for YouTube, waiting for half an hour for re-compression only to find the pc’s been waiting for me to answer “do you want to save over your old file?” “YESSSS!!!”. Back to lounge for another half an hour.  Upload and wait for two or so hours, while I re-write the tags, but thankfully only paste the description as at least one part of me had been alert during the process.

So, now it’s all loaded, with subtitles re-edited, and a nice new end template to boot.

YouTube have kindly notified Twitter, who is kindly posting on my Facebook page, so all I have left to do is notify a couple of other felting and eco-printing sites and I’m good to go – to bed that is.

It’s way past my bed time and of course, it coincides with the one day I’ve arranged to start walking with my husband at some crack of dawn hour tomorrow morning!

Having had a proper whinge now though, (and thank you for reading this far, I really appreciate you ‘listening’), I must say, I love the video.  It isn’t long, but I think it’s quite a good tutorial.  I mean, if you like felting and eco-dyeing and want to learn to make a nuno felt scarf that you can eco-dye for extra dimension and colour, it’s definitely the video for you! Check it out here.

So many eco-tees!

…And lots of other things as well!

Since I wrote my last post, I have bundled, boiled, dried, rinsed, dried and ironed quite a few new eco-printed shirts and tees. All ready for the CWA Easter Art & Craft Twilight Market on 4th April.

Rather than bore you with the details, which are similar as for previous posts, I’ll add a gallery of my latest beautiful nature-painted clothes.

I’ve taken photos of them in the last few moments of sunlight in front of our mini-rainforest – so the colours of the eco-dyed clothes are enhanced by the trees and bushes, and natural light.

Over-dyeing with eucalyptus

A few days ago, I experimented dyeing an old tee shirt and cotton scarf which had not been mordanted, but had been washed. I used turmeric and paprika powders from my cupboard and eco-printed with Eucalyptus cinerea leaves dipped in iron water.

After boiling for 2 hours the result was bright yellow turmeric areas, with smudgy black leafy areas.  I dried them but wasn’t really happy with them. I just don’t like the colours! They’re too garish. I didn’t really think it through but just grabbed what I had in the pantry!

Undeterred, and not liking to waste a good under-painting, I washed them and dipped in milk/water mordant then dried again.

Today after dipping in water/milk again, I laid out a heap of Eucalyptus leaves from my garden and Eucalyptus cinerea that had been soaking in water with a bit of vinegar.

Then they got bundled up and as I write they’re still boiling in a bath of water stocked with more eucalyptus leaves and bark.

There was space in the top of the pot to place an upturned colander, so I bundled up some more paper and leaves (just Eucalyptus leaves this time) and stashed them on there. I covered the pot with al-foil, and secured it with string to keep the steam in.

After a couple of hours or so, I’ll take them all out and leave the cloth as long as I can before opening them.  Good luck with that Madame Impatience!

Blue and eucalyptus eco dyeing

Ooh, what’s in the bundles?  They’re blue and tightly wrapped.  There’s a bit of brown showing through too …

On Monday, I spent the day catching up on unfinished business.  The business of eco-dyeing.  I’ve had such a sparse time of it over the last few months because of work commitments that I was pretty damn stir crazy by the time I’d gathered my leaves and excitedly brought home my first bunch of Eucalyptus Cinerea from the florists.

The other leaves were collected from my driveway and garden, blown roughly to the ground by cyclone Marcia that made her way through our town a couple of weeks ago.  Luckily, Marcia had spent her energy except for gallons of rain that she dumped on us on her way down from Yepoon where she’d crossed from the ocean to the land.

Our normally fairly dry creek burst its banks due to the constant downpour and king tides that had something to do with keeping the river backed up with water for a day or two.  Here’s one of the local road on the first morning …

As you can imagine, lots of children were hugely disappointed at not being able to attend school – along with adults who also couldn’t make work because the roads were cut off…

Disappointed.  Sure.  *Smiles*.

Anyway, while cyclone Marcia brought devastation to homes and crops north of here, along with flooding to the south, she did kindly provide me with windfall leaves that I eagerly collected for my dye pot.

I had two second-hand cotton tee shirts that I’d pre-mordanted a few months ago and kept until I had the time to dye them.

Sunday was that day.

I was so eager to get the bundles into the pot that I forgot to photograph the layout of the leaves.  Sorry about that.

Anyhow, here’s the reveal, with a selection of photos. I love the shade of blue imparted by the natural Aquarelle botanic liquid dye.

Unwrapping the long sleeved tee shirt. Some of the leaves are still attached.

The short sleeved tee shirt with a more linear pattern.

Long sleeved tee on the line.

After they’d dried, I rinsed them in water to wash off remnants of leaves and mordant.  Then ironed them.  Then hung them out to dry.  They have lost some of their depth of colour, but I have to say, I really love them and am pleased at how they’ve turned out.

I also now have two eco-dyed silk scarves using the same eco colour palette.  Here they are side by side.  What do you think?

I love the tie die lines from the bundling string on the bottom scarf.  I also love the depth of colour from the leaves on the other scarf.

My next project was two un-mordanted cotton items that I stuffed with leaves, tied and boiled in turmeric water.  That produced an interesting result. But more on that next blog post.

Eco-dye results of alum, tea & iron on silk

After waiting for the scarves to cool, I unwrapped them, picked off the leaves, hung them out to dry – and then rinsed them in water with splash of vinegar (silk likes that) and finally ironed them dry.

Scarf 1

Although the kale didn’t make any difference as far as I could see, the tea leaves left nice golden brown marks along the scarf, and the ends that were on the outside of the bundle, where they touched the rusty mozzie coil holder, had turned dark grey.  The effect is very pleasing:

Scarf over-dyed with tea on eucalyptus dyed silk. Dark grey spots from rust.

Scarf 2

I really like how this one turned out.  While the sage leaves didn’t really leave any colour, they did act as pale resists in some places.  However, the roibus created some vivid russet marking and the black tea produced grey.

Scarf dyed with tea, roibus, iron, rust and alum

Where the dye-bath (tea, rusty iron, alum) saturated the material, it stained it a lovely dark grey-black.  There is a pattern that repeats, showing how it was folded, and the bull dog clips acted as strong resists that left clear marks on the background.

Scarf freshly unbundled, before ironing showing repeating pattern created by folding material pre-dyeing.

This scarf has given me the confidence to experiment further with different dye-baths, and eco-print materials and mordants!

Results from second eco-dyeing experiment

After a fair amount of patience, I unwrapped the two bundles from yesterday’s eco-printing experiment.

Bundle 1 – the silk scarf bundled with eucalyptus leaves produced a nice golden scarf with darker gold leaf prints.  And would you believe? I forgot to photograph it! Sorry.

However, as the result was similar to my first scarf, I decided to use it in today’s experiment, which I’ll post next.

Bundle 2 – the previously dyed pink/purple tie-dyed piece of silk which reminded me too much of Barbie – that I immersed in the dye bath, came out with some lovely variations of golden overlaying the pink and purple, muting those colours nicely.  I photographed this one and it looks like this:

Pink purple dyed silk overdyed in eucalyptus leaf/bark dye bath

I love the colours now, and will probably hem this piece and use as a scarf.  Of course I could turn it into a simple camisole top but I’m not sure if that will overstretch my sewing gene beyond it’s capacity.

My next post will cover today’s experiment with tea, iron and alum mordants.

Second attempt at eco-printing

Today’s experiment:

I am using dried eucalyptus leaves which were blown onto the garden as small branches snapped off last week in the wind.  Over the week, in the hot dry weather, the leaves dried.  It rained last night, so they were a bit soft, and I decided to try these. This is different to my first experiment where I used fresh leaves.

Bundle 1: is a silk scarf with the leaves and buds rolled up into a bundle inside of the wetted scarf, tied with elastic bands, and on top of a metal grater which is sitting in the dye bath (which I used in the first experiment – vinegar, water and concentration of dye extracted from eucalyptus bark and leaves).

Leaves laid out on damp silk scarf, ready to be rolled into a bundle.

Bundle 2: The second piece that I have put into this batch is a square of silk that I had pre-dyed with shop-bought dyes in pinks and lavender – using a tie-dye technique, which leaves some of the silk un-dyed.

I wasn’t too keen on the pinks so I wet this scarf, placed some of the dried leaves onto it, folded it and then rolled it and tied in a bundle with elastic bands.

This one I set inside the grater, in the dye liquid (using the grater mainly to keep the bundle in the water, and also to act as a ledge to put the first bundle for steaming).  I am not sure if the grater is made of aluminium or other metal, but this may also act as a mordant and produce a change in colour to the immersed bundle, apart from the expected honey  gold as from the first batch.

ANTICIPATED RESULTS:

According to India Flint in her book: Eco Colour, steaming eucalyptus leaves in silk will give a print from the leaves onto the fabric as the leaves give up their dye.

The tighter the bundle, the better the leaf-print.

Bundle 1 – steamed:

I am not sure if the bundle is tied tightly enough.

After the first 30 minutes, there was a faint green hue, but not much result, so I dipped the bundle briefly in the dye bath, in the hope that the acid mordant would assist the release of the colours.  Then put it back to steam.  I also put a bowl on top of the pan lid, to keep more steam inside.

I am leaving the bundle in for another 60 minutes after which time I will check again.

Bundle 2 – immersed in the pre-used dye bath

As I am dyeing over an existing blend of colours, I am anticipating a variety of shades.

Eucalyptus has the ability to give up to four different shades/colours from four consecutive uses of a dye bath, depending on many variables which include:
– the type of eucalyptus
– any mordant used
– the type of pot used (co-mordant), or even the grater or other metal added
– how many times the dye bath has been used before.
– how long the bundle is boiled.  (Eucalyptus is best boiled or steamed as it needs higher temperatures to release the colours from its thick leaves.  Many other leaves require gentler heating – and some work better if frozen first, then gently heated.)

As you can see, unlike using shop bought chemical dyes, this is a much less accurate way to obtain colour.  But that is part of the fun!

Apparently it is better to  cool the bundle down before unwrapping, then to dry it before rinsing as this helps the dye to fix better.

—

I removed the bundles from dye-bath after total of 90 minutes.

Bundles removed from dye bath. Reddish one was boiled, browny one was steamed.

Time will tell as to the actual results.

Bespoke Gift Ideas!

Wanting something unusual, unique, sumptuous for a friend or loved one for a special occasion and know they’d love a piece of wearable art? Or a stunning felted wall hanging? Or quirky felted bowl or other unique item?

Here are some ideas:

Summer Scarf (nuno felted onto tissue silk)

Summer scarf with zig zag detail

Summer scarf with circles and free flow design

Summer scar with larger detail in complimentary colour

Network Scarf (lots of merino and varieties of silk)

Blue network scarf with lots of hand dyed silk – hankies, tops, chiffon and dimensional yarn. Blues, turquoise green.

Red network scarf with lots of hand dyed silk – hankies, tops, chiffon and dimensional yarn. Reds, oranges, maroon.

Skinny framework network scarves

Summer Scarf with Flower detail (nuno felted onto hemmed 100% silk scarf)

Hemmed soft, drapable nuno felted silk scarf with poppies at either end.

Closeup of nuno felted flower scarf – Fantasy flower – tissue silk, merino, silk hankies, silk tops, cotton scrim – all hand dyed

Iris inspired summer flower scarf nuno felted with 15micron merino and hand dyed silk hankies and silk tops felted onto tissue silk. Blues, greens.

Poppies! Nuno felted summer scarf with tissue silk, merino wool, silk noile, silk tops, silk hankies.

Jewellery made with felt and/or beads/freshwater pearls

Jewellery made with hand-made felt roll, embroidery and beading.

Jewellery made with hand-made felt “bead”, embroidery and beading.

Jewellery made with hand-made felt, embroidery and beading.

Jewellery made with hand-made felt balls, and beading.

3D rose brooch drying on a rack in the kitchen.

Wall hangings and felt paintings

Diptyche of poppies. Wet felted with beading.

Wet felted wall hanging of Moffat Beach

Beach wall hanging, drying

Country scene ’round’ felt painting 15cm

Completed wall hanging, with added details in embroidery and needle-felt.

Vases, bowls, books and more…

Two glass vases with the different styles of felted covering

Felt Covered Note Book

Green and orange felted bowl

Glasses case multi coloured – front view

Turquoise bowl

3 felted purses in a row

Midnight sky nuno felt evening bag

These colours remind me of the beach! Various felted goodies.

“Flotsam & Jetsum” Beach inspired mobile

Some ideas for Christmas

Ensure your gift is ready for Christmas!

Now is a good time to put in your order for a commissioned scarf or other piece of felt art.

As these are hand made items, and each piece takes several hours to make, if you order now you can ensure your order will arrive in time to gift it at Christmas.

If you let me know which out of the scarves or other items you’ve seen on this blog that you like, and give me an idea of the colours or style you are after, I will do the rest!

There are felted gifts to suit your budget –  from $5 plus P&P to $500 plus P&P.

I would love to help you with the ideal gift! Contact me today using the contact form below and we can arrange that extra special one-of-a-kind gift.

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Summer scarf Network scarf Summer Scarf with Flower Detail Bowl Vase Covered note-book Jewellery - necklace Jewellery - earrings Jewellery - cuff/bracelet Jewellery - set Felt wall hanging Felt painting Other (please complete comments)

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$20-$49

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Eco dyed scarf on Jill

Jill has been trying out my eucalyptus dyed silk scarf while I’ve been at work.

She even took some pictures of herself, cleverly working out how to use the timer button on the camera.

Jill may look like a dummy but she’s quite smart lol.

Here are some pics of her wearing the scarf in different ways, showcasing the lovely warm light browns and beiges that the eucalyptus and vinegar produced on the silk.

Not bad for a first attempt at dying.  (I need to work on my ironing skills though.)

Eucalypt eco dyed scarf on Jill. Dyed with vinegar, eucaluptus leaves and water.

Eco dyed eucalypt scarf folded to show different patterns

Eco scarf on jill folded back over her shoulders – very chic!

Eucalyptus dyed silk scarf – closeup showing variegations of colour

Two more scarves for the markets

Nov ’13 Glasshouse Market stall

Yesterday, along with the Poppy Scarf, I also made a couple more nuno felt scarves using a hand-dyed piece of chiffon that I cut into one thin and one wider strip. I was very industrious as I was working towards today’s Glasshouse Market stall, and the next few markets before Christmas.

Without going into the ins and outs of the whole production, here are some photos of the finished scarves.

Summer scarf in rose, lavender, heliotrope and yellow on hand-dyed tissue silk using lighter dye bath of same colours.

Close up of narrow summer scarf nuno felted onto tissue silk. Colours include lavender, heliotrope and rose.

Close up of summer scarf in rose, lavender, heliotrope and yellow – modelled by a lady wearing a rose top.

Slim summer scarf tied as belt

Summer scarf nuno felted onto tissue silk using merino wool on tissue silk, with silk hankies and silk tops. Hand dyed colours include lavender, heliotrope and rose.

Hemmed soft, drapable nuno felted silk scarf with poppies at either end.