As I have promised awhile ago, I have now finished my ebook with 5 tutorials for hand felted bags. I did my best to illustrate almost every step in the process and wish that those who buy it will learn a lot about feltmaking.I like to show you how I use them, which is one of the many different ways to dye with onion skins.
I keep all the skins when we use onions and put them in a little fruitnet or in a paper bag, so that the air can get to them and they dry in the bag. When I have collected enough onion skins, minimum 100g of onion skins for 100g of dry weigth of fibres, I get some wool or silk together and prepare it for dyeing. See my previous post:
http://lizetfrijters.blogspot.com/2010/01/introduction-to-natural-dyeing-scouring.html
A mordant is needed for the dye to fix well to the fibres. Mordants will help the fibres to absorb the dye and make them colour fast.
I use alum (aluminium potassium sulphate). You can find this salt in many pharmacies. If you are lucky like me, you might be able to find the natural rock alum. I am very happy with that and I use it in the same way.
After washing the fibres well, I fill my dye pot with enough water, so that the fibres can move loosely. ( you can use a pot in any material, it will though affect the end result; stainless steel is neutral and will not react with the fibres).
I weigh the alum; 10% of the dry weight of the fibres, if you are going to dye wool and 20% for silk; and dissolve into the water.
Time to put the fibres in the pot and heat them to just under boiling temperature. I leave it at that temperature for about an hour and than let it cool down slowly.
You can let it go to boiling temperature and simmer it for an hour.
I avoid that for the following reasons:
-silk looses some of its lustre when boiled.
-I often dye wool slivers for feltmaking and if I would simmer them, they are more prone to start felting already in the dyepot, which makes felting harder later on.
I turn off the heat source and let the fibres cool down in the pot. I usually leave them in the alum solution overnight, so that the alum can more penetrate into the fibres.
Meanwhile, I soak the onion skins in water overnight and bring to just under boiling temperature the next day. When the solution is cooled down, I pass it through a sieve, even through a cloth, so that no little pieces stay in the water and dirty the wool. I dry the onion skins and use them for a later dye bath, they will give off less colour though.
Now, I can add the fibres to the onion water and bring the temperature to just under boiling point, leaving it there for about 60 to 90 minutes. If you try this, make sure all the fibres are completely immersed in the water. I do not stir too much when I am dyeing wool slivers, when dyeing with silk, I stir now and than.
I usually leave the fibres in the dye bath overnight.
Rinse and dry.
The result of the silk dyed in the first dye bath.
Onion skins give a beautiful gold colour. It is possible to dye more fibre in the leftover dye bath, it just will produce a lighter colour.
This silk is dyed in the second dye bath and shows a much lighter colour.
Here are a few possibilities to alter the colour and get different colours out of one dye bath:
1. alum mordant
2. alum mordant and put into a solution of washing soda after the dyeing.
3. alum mordant and put into iron water made with rusted nails, the colour gets more green if it is left in there for longer
4. is number 3 put into a solution of washing soda afterwards.
This shows how we can modify the colour by altering the pH. Adding lemon juice or vinegar will turn the wool more yellow. It is fun to play with these possibilities.
I have come up with this method that works for me, using the gimp, which is free to download from the internet by following this link:
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
TAKING A SCREENSHOT
Open the treasury you want to copy. On my computer, I can not see the whole treasury at once, so I make sure to have the top half on the screen. I will copy the treasury in 2 parts.
Open the gimp.
Go to File - Create - Screenshot
A new window will open where you can choose between:
- Grab a single window
- Grab the whole screen
I usually choose the first one, grab a single window.
Click on Grab.
Grab the crosshair and drag it to the window with the treasury.
You now have copied the top half of the treasury, it will automatically open in a new window.
Go to the web page with the treasury and place the bottom half on the screen.
Repeat the same process as with the top half.
Once you drag the crosshair to the treasury, a new file opens in gimp with the bottom part of the treasury.
You now have 2 files, each one with a part of the treasury and the rest of the webpage that comes with it. Let's clean it up and select the part we want to copy.
We start with the first window and we are going to crop the part of the treasury we would like to copy.
Select the crop tool from the toolbox dialog or alternatively, click on Tools - Transform Tools - Crop and the crop tool will be available.
Move the cursor over the part you want to select and draw a rectangle over it. If it isn't right from the first time, you can always have another go or stretch one of the sides with the cursor. Once you have selected the area, click on one of the squares in the corner.
Now you have cropped the image. If by chance you want to change it, you can always go to edit and undo any action, as long as you haven't saved it.
Repeat this whole process for the bottom part.
PASTING
You will have 2 partial images of the treasury now. I used to save them and paste them into blogger as 2 separate images. I will show you how you can make one image out of them:
In one of the windows click File - New :
A window pops up.
You will need to decide on the size of the image. The size that pops up is the one from the image of half the treasury. Make the width somewhat larger.
The height needs to be at least twice the size, I make it a bit longer, we can recrop that later.
Click OK.
Go to the top treasury window. Right click on the image - Edit - Copy
Now go to your new image and right click it - Edit - Paste
Click the Move Tool.
Or click Tools - Transform Tools - Move
Bring the image to the top of the template.
When it is in the right place, right click on it - Layer - Anchor Layer
Do the same with the bottom image.
You can see in the picture that the 2 images are overlapping, so move the bottom image to where you want it to be.
Make sure to anchor the layer when the image is in the right position.
If you'd like to crop the image a bit, you can do it to take away some of the white background, but it is not necessary.
the image is ready, the only thing left to do is save it on your computer.
SAVING.
Click File - Save as
a window pops up, name the file.
Choose in which folder you want to save it.
I also select jpeg as a file type in both places provided for it.
Click Save.
A new window pops up "save as jpeg": choose the quality of the image and click Save.
That's it, now you can copy it to where you want, your blog or social network, just as any other image.
This beautiful and inviting etsy treasury, "Put On Your Party Frocks N Dance" was made by SachiDesigns.
I hope this helps some of you, etsy sellers to show your treasuries on your blogs.
Feel free to comment or add links of other posts about copying treasuries.
Are you familiar with how to make felt? If not, following is a very basic felt making tutorial for beginners and suitable for adults and children, exited about learning a new technique.
Felt making requires a few tools, already available in most households:
-a table
-plastic to protect your table
-an old towel
-a piece of bubble wrap, at least 40cm x 50cm or a beach mat or bamboo stick window blind
-50g wool slivers merino wool or other good felting wool
-a piece of fly screen at least 40cm x 40cm
-a spray bottle with hot soapy water
-tape measure
-some rags
Mark off an area of 30cm x 30cm.
We are now ready to lay down the wool for our piece.
Take the wool sliver into your left hand (left handed people in right hand).
With your right hand, gently pull a piece of wool and put it in a corner of your square, the side that you hold in your hand goes on the edge, except if you want very irregular edges.
We are now ready to start a new row. This time we let the loose bits overlap the first row. Every piece we lay down is now overlapping the wool of the first row and the previous piece.
When we have covered the total surface with wool, we spray water over it.
We repeat this whole process in the second layer, which is placed at an angle of 90 degrees on top of the first. We keep going with 2 other layers, each time changing direction and wetting with the spray bottle after each layer.
If there is water coming through the screen, when you push down the wool means that it is too wet. Now the rags will come in handy, use them to soak up the water.
Roll up and down for approx. 5 minutes for a start and than check. If the wool is still very loose, keep rolling. You can test that by carefully lifting the fibers.
Roll again for 5 minutes and do the previous test again. If the wool is still a bit loose, keep rolling. Turn the piece on an angle of 90 degrees and roll again for another 5 minutes.
When the wool has felted enough, this means the whole piece holds well together, we can go over to the next stage, called the filling. This can be done as long or as short as you want. The longer you do it the harder and stronger the felt becomes.
The filling can be done by more rolling in the bubble wrap or the bamboo roll. Another method is by rubbing it over the sink, which goes faster and makes it harder as well.
Happy felting!
