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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Needle felted drier balls

These drier balls make clothes dry faster in your dryer. Worth trying it out. We don't have a dryer, so I can't try it.
I found this free tutorial on craftartedu.com
Enjoy.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dyeing wool

Recently, I started dyeing some of the local wool that I have been collecting for a few years. I usually work with merino wool in slivers. This wool is a cross breed of merino and something else, but I forgot which one.

I am so happy with the colours and realised that this wool takes up the dyes so much easier than merino. This encourages me to try more different breeds.
The pinks are from brazilwood, the purple to the left is brazilwood and modified in rust water. The greens are cosmos plants without the flowers and modified with rust water. Now, for the grey one, it is a tanning based plant modified with rust water, but I don't remember whether it is mangosteen skins or casuarina. This wool is a bit course for clothing, but will be used for bags or wall hangings, or maybe for a pair of slippers for me.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Dahlia experiments

Here are a few experiments with dahlia flowers on silk. I had only 3 flowers, so for now I cannot repeat them. On the left is the flowers rolled in the silk and rolled around an iron file. On the right just the flowers and wrapped around a plastic bottle. The bottom of the bottle was immersed in the same water as the other piece and the top was just getting the steam. the top gave the beautiful purple colour as it didn't get in contact with the iron in the water.
Now I need to wait till next year for more flowers.

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