Recovering from my laundry Faux Pas

I was going to report on this yesterday as a follow up to my laundry gripe, but my dress was just too exciting, so I postponed.

We really piled on the stressors in our life this year: baby, move, new job, new church, selling a house. Usually I can shove my problems to a dark recess of my mind and focus on daily life stuff. Nevertheless, they creep forward at times, reminding me that our house still hasn't sold, isn't even showing in fact, that we're still living in a borrowed house that really needs to be sold. Ugh! That's why I try to bury these nagging thoughts under piles of baby giggles and craft ideas.

Whenever I start stewing over the glacial housing market, I try to distract myself. First, I sat down and read the Bible. However, I'm in a section right now that's mostly genealogies. All of those weird interesting names pass in front of me, and my worrying shifts from the house to the baby. This baby had better be a girl if it wants a name. I am totally uninspired by boys' names this go around.

I needed to find something else to distract me, so I pulled out the stained tees and the Rit. One pot led to 3 with 1 burp cloth, 2 tees and 4 onesies - cobalt blue, tangerine orange and grass green. Rit offers formulas for creating different shades. The website is useful, if you have all of the base colors you need.

Speaking of what colors you "need," the Color Kittens are deceiving! You cannot make any color of paint/dye out of a combination of red, yellow and blue. On the color wheel, it works, but in practice, it's a mess. You need brown and black to fine tune colors (For instance, gold = yellow and brown, burgundy = red and black, maroon = red and brown). If you are going to buy a set of basic primary colors and hope to mix the shades you want, make sure you buy a brown and a black also. I forgot this rule when I bought my dye, so picking exact colors was difficult.

All the same, I really enjoyed seeing Baby G in a bright hugh. Her wardrobe is drowning in pink and brown with flowers. Time for a change.

After dress sewing yesterday, I'm not up for a huge project today. Still, I think I could find some cute shapes (not flowers or ducks) to add to these onesies. I now have three green ones so it might be time for a fruit/veggie theme. And the orange one is begging for a tree. Hmm... looks like I found today's project.

Tye Dye Onesies

In the midst of baking 3 lasagnas, cooking yoghurt and washing dirty clothes, I decided to tye dye some hand-me-down, formula stained onesies. Hardly the most unique project I've done, yes, I know. The dye transformed these otherwise boring, very dingy onesies into stand alone pieces. I felt like I was recycling.

Sometimes, I get frustrated with baby clothes. The color spectrum is very limited. I want to see my girl in some fine bright colors. Instead, the clothes line is a heavy with pastels. When I pulled these onesies out of the 6 month bin, I decided it was time to spice things up a little.

With wool, I use food color as dye. Working with the food coloring is pretty easy because it's totally safe, so I can use any vessel in the kitchen to mix colors they way I want them. Not so with dye for plant fibers. They require a separate dye pot and dye utensils. When I first read that, I thought I'd use "natural" dyes. Turns out the mordant used with "natural" dyes is as toxic as the fabric dyes. Oh well.

Now that I've gotten my feet wet, I'm ready to try some more difficult colors and techniques, I think. I'll let you know how it goes.

Adventures in Dyeing

Last week I spent several days in bed with a migraine. To make matters less interesting, the computer was dead (as I mentioned earlier - power cord is no more). So I started a really easy knitting project to pass the time between feeding G and taking more medicine. Fortunately, Gwennan was a doll. I couldn't have asked for an easier, quieter roomie (unless, of course, she could have brought me food on a platter - we're working on it).

Since switching to formula, we pick Gwennan up most mornings to find her soaked, so I'm back to experimenting with diaper soakers and wool diaper covers - my knitting project. I used this pattern (it shows an adult content message, but there's no adult content). Ravelry has many, many more patterns to dig through and try out, including crochet patterns.
note - I used fisherman's wool and knitted two strands at once - not necessary, just made the pattern go faster because I could use bigger needles and still get a tight stitch.

In case you're wondering why I made a wool diaper cover, wool has such great absorptive qualities that it can actually be used as the outermost layer to keep baby's skin and clothes dry. It also stays warm when wet making it ideal for backpacking. Tim and I are very protective of our 100% wool items.

My diaper cover was an ugly brown and white (Fisherman's Wool only comes in "natural" colors), so I set about to dyeing it!!!

I love to dye fibres. My previous projects include play silks and two other wool diaper soakers. When I first visited the Craft Center where my sister attends, the fibre majors reminded me of librarians. I decided that if I attended the Craft Center, I would pick a cooler major like ceramics or glass blowing. Now that I've spent more time with fibres, I would absolutely major in fibres - weaving, knitting, dyeing, felting, silk painting, batiques, sewing - so many cool things to be done with fabrics and the materials that make up fabrics.

I dyed the diaper cover first in a deep indigo, leaving the lower portion in the dye vat longer so that the color would show a gradient. Here it is drying in the sun:

I'm excited about the results, but I'm waiting for it to felt to the correct size. By "felt," I mean that raw wool shrinks when exposed to heat then quickly cooled (you might have accidentally felted a pair of dress pants before - I have). When you felt wool, it gives it a neat texture, or in my case, it shrinks to the size you need it. My girl's tiny behind needs a tiny diaper cover.

I had extra yarn and dye left over. Rather than let it go to waste, I continued to play:

The method for dyeing protein fibres (wool, silk) is very similar to dyeing easter eggs. You need dye, warm water and an acid to make the color stay fast. I use white vinegar and food coloring. You can also use kool-aid which allows for pre-made colors. With food coloring, you have to mix your own colors.

An interesting point on mixing your own colors - the red dye was absorbed faster than the blue, so that the diaper cover came out a deep violet/indigo color whereas the skein of yarn is blue with no discernible red.

If you are interested in trying your hand at dyeing, start with some inexpensive material and go for it! Dharma Trading is my favorite site for materials. Also, you can pick up 100% wool yarn at any crafting store. Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool is probably your best bet. Much better quality yarn can be found at specialty shops and online.

I used a host of websites when I first started dabbling with dyeing. I still have a lot to learn, so I'm going to let more experienced crafters tell you what to do:

Dyeing Yarn Using Food Coloring
Dyed in the Wool
Hand Painting Yarn - hand painting is more involved than merely dyeing in a pot like I did
Dyeing with Herbs - really neat site although I still have to grow some of the herbs to try this. I do have a large collection of onion skins ready whenever I figure out something I want to use them on.
Natural Dyes from Plants - another site with natural products for dyeing

And for those of you who want to try your hand with play silks:
Making Play Silks

I made some for Gwennan. I still need to practice consistency, but they were incredibly rewarding!