And the dyeing continues. Its so much fun! After the experiment a few days ago with the flower petals rolled up in fabric, I decided to try beetroot. We had harvested some beetroot from the garden, and they bleed such a glorious colour, I thought they must be good for something. Hmm. A bit of research on the net didn't exactly fill me with hope. Apparently beetroot is pretty darned useless, lol. At least when you need to frequently wash whatever you are dyeing. Luckily, I only want to use whatever I dye for collages etc, which won't get washed, so I decided to go ahead anyway with a few little bits.
I really ought to learn a bit of patience, but I thought the colour of beetroot is so intense, it wouldn't take long to colour stuff. So I chucked the peelings in a pot with water, put the bits of lace and fabric in and heated it up. Turned it off as soon as it was about to boil and let it cool down. Well, I should have let it cool down, but Mrs Impatience here took the stuff out while it was still hot. I rinsed the little doily just a wee bit, shouldn't have done that, most of the colour disappeared. Same with the little broderie anglaise trim, the cotton went white again, but the actual embroidery was a delicate pink. The next few bits I didn't rinse. Hey, I wanted some intense pinks as well!
These are the bits on the washing line, still wet -
The silk took the beetroot colour ever so well and turned this gorgeous shell pink colour-
The broderie anglaise trim. Fabric stayed pretty much the same,but the embroidery turned a gorgeous light pink, sooo pretty -
The lace produced almost an ombre effect in place, nice and random in others-
The thick crochet lace took the colour the best, ending up a really deep raspberry pink almost -
Aaah, the delicate pink of the broderie anglaise-
Drying-
And this is what they looked like after they had dried. The silk is still a gorgeous soft pink -
The fine lace kept the colour very well -
as did the thicker crochet lace -
And that deliciously soft shell pink broderie anglaise?
Well.......
here it is -
It completely lost that gorgeous colour and ended up all white again. Oh bother.
It was interesting to see how different fabrics reacted to the beetroot. Now I am just waiting for the blackberries to see what sort of pink they will produce.
I have masses of pics on the camera of new brocante finds, I just need to find the time to resize etc. Maybe tonight, eh? At least some of them.
I am linking this post to Beverly's PINK SATURDAY linky party over at the How Sweet the Sound blog. Sooo many lovely pink things to drool over!
For now, toodlepip xxx
Confused? Yep, me too, lol, blame it on this lovely sunshine we are having at the moment. I was trying to get two very different subjects into the blog title, this week's inchie and a dyeing experiment.
This week's Every Inchie Monday theme is TOURIST, and of course, being in France at the moment, it just had to be an inchie about a tourist in Paris. The background is a copy of a 19th Century map of France showing Paris, the Eiffel Tower is a tiny little image I already had in my printed out paper stash, and the words I cut out of the tiniest little English/French dictionary - the French word for tourist and for the Underground (subway), as that is the best way to get around Paris -
The second part of the title refers to a little dyeing experiment. I read on Suziqu's Threadworks' wonderful blog that she used geranium and rose petals to dye some things a delicate pink. So when we were chatting on Skype the other day, she told me how she did it, and I just had to try it for myself.
I still had a few blooms on one of the roses, and plenty of geraniums, so I picked some petals -
I used a piece of ivory silk and a piece of white hand loomed old French linen, and this is the result -
Silk
I love the subtle colours the silk picked up.
Linen
The colours on the linen came out stronger. I like both results, they will make pretty nice backgrounds. I might try it out on some lace in the next few days, see what that will produce.
Another thing I'll try soon is dyeing with blackberries. They are almost ready, we have scoffed a few already. They should produce a pretty pink, don't you think?
Thats all for now, hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in another post tomorrow.
Toodlepip xxx
