Dyeing up a storm....

Summer never *really* arrived here in Melbourne this year, and the extra chill in the air (and on the ground) offers a not so subtle hint that Old Man Winter is starting to close the door on the chance that it ever will :o(  *sniffs* I am so NOT a cold weather kinda girl... long balmy days into velvet nights, that’s me :o)  *sighs whistfully*

... Maaaaybe I can blame the lack of warm on not having done any fabric dyeing this year, maybe I can’t :oP  But what I can say, is that I was smart enough to realize that the lovely weekend Mother Nature just granted us was going to be one of my last chances to throw all the windows and doors wide open (gotta have good ventilation don’tcha know lol) and break out my dye pots *rubs hands gleefully together*

Behold the pile of fabulous Epic WIN I have as a result of my magical mixings:

If you have never played with creating your own custom colours, you are really missing out :o)  The satisfaction is immense.... a drop of this, a dribble of that you have alchemical magic on your hands!  Who would have thought that adding a few drops of blue and purple to a brown dye bath could add so much extra life to the end result?!?!   

Each of the following pieces were done using the following method; Mix up a colour, dye a piece of fabric, add a drop of another colour, dye another piece, add a splash more water and a drop of another colour, dye another piece.... So much fun seeing what comes out of the dye bath, especially how the different fabrics take the dye - notice below how much warmer the tones of the overdyed ivory longpile are in comparison to the white medium pile cashmere...

The longile:

Medium pile cashmere in pinks and purples:

Medium pile cashmere in shades of brown:

I know I know, I hear you.  You never know which colours you should add to get what, and you are scared you will ruin your fabric, but you know what?  There IS a brilliant way you can work this stuff out with out the risk of ruining a single piece of precious fabric, annnnd leaving no evidence of your (potentially) less than perfect efforts lol!  Seriously!  

Baking!

Yes, you read right... get thee into the kitchen, whip up a double batch of royal icing - and a batch of cookies to use it on, of course lol.  Divide the icing between a packet of disposable cups, and mix a cup for each food colour you have.  Then, with  Paddle Pop sticks, use a dab of this colour, and a scoop of that to experiment and mix up subtle/wacky/daring colour combinations in the remaining cups.  Ace fun, and easy to clean up as the “wrong ‘uns” can go straight into the bin :o)  Then of course you get to transfer the “good” colours to sandwich bags (knot one corner, snip the other) and pipe pretty designs onto your cookies... like so!  

An educational and tasty experiment in colour lol!  What could be better <3  *whispers*  why dyeing your own fabrics of course lol... after all, that was the point of this post :oP