Friday, June 27, 2008

Dyeing of the colourful kind!

Group session was all about dyeing using natural and artificial dyes. Katie, Ben and I had already tried out a few natural dyes as reported here, but families also brought along big vats of paprika/ chilli and elderberry to add to our coffee, tea, nettles/dock leaves and beetroot. We all had a go at painting on paper with these dyes as well as dipping materials and sheep wool into the bowls to see how deep a colour the dye would produce. It looked like the elderberry was going to be the best, but once home the dye turned out to be a rather sad grey which was a bit of a disappointment.
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Natural dye

The artificial dyeing produced, not surprisingly, wonderful results. Tie dyeing t-shirts, cloth bags and literally anything in the way of plain materials produced an array of colour.
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Deep colours of the artificial dye.

Shall certainly be doing more of this. At 75 pence each for the children's white t-shirts at QDs (and they were lovely quality), or £1 for adults (although these were rather huge) tie-dyed tops make brilliant gifts for the younger members of our family.
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Tie-dye t-shirts and natural dyed cloth (at far right), although the colour didn't last unfortunately.

Love this website, all about colour + some projects to have a bash at.

little flower

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4 Comments:

At 11:03 pm, Blogger stefndawniy said...

wow I know a little miss Naomi who would love doing that, I'll show her your pics :-)

 
At 2:34 pm, Blogger Elaine, Ellies Treasures said...

It's great fun and quite cheap to do (or free for the natural dyes) but a bit messy, which of course goes hand in hand with HE doesn't it!? Elle

 
At 12:47 am, Blogger HelenHaricot said...

our girls really enjoyed it, and have loved showing off their tops! do they need to be set before washing?
chris only took a couple of photos - on flickr

 
At 12:24 pm, Blogger Elaine, Ellies Treasures said...

I didn't set our t-shirts. You probably know already that it's best to wash them seperately as the dye still seems to be leaking from ours, even after three washes! Elle

 

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