Dye Workshop: Playing with Colour

 Dye Workshop: June 21, 2014

Changing the colour of fiber is a magical experience. It is so much fun to to watch the fiber absorb the colour and transform
This workshop is about the basics of immersion  dyeing using commercial acid dyes. We will be experimenting with vat dyeing and overdyeing.

The workshop runs from 10:00 a.m. -3:00 p.m. and includes materials. Each participant will take home a sample of the colours dyed.
Cost: $90, includes materials
Registration at coloursparks@gmail.com

A Tree for Mental Health

This is the beginning of my layout for the tree piece I am doing for a fund raiser for Canadian Mental Health at Bottega next week.  At the event, the participants will be able to add leaves to the tree using a variety of materials and they will have the option to write words on their leaves. I am very excited about the project and I look forward to see the tree completely felted and fulled and full of leaves.
At the end of the evening the tree will be auctioned off.
My studio isn't big enough to make a pieces this size. So don't tell my kid, but I used one of his old paintings as a board to create a surface for the lay out. I did cover the painting with plastic so it wouldn't get wet.

Fabulous Finds: We did it

Fabulous Finds was fun. It was great being around all the other artisans and watching the people go by. It wasn't exactly the venue for Luka's Hip Hop hats. The crowd was more or less older than his hats, but it was a great experience and we both learned alot. There didn't seem to be a lot of fibre artists in the crowd either as there wasn't that much interest in the fibres. The biggest hit was the the pair of pink baby booties. Everyone touched them and cooed.

Dyeing Black and Grey

 Even though I am rather colour obsessed, when I bought the dyes I included black, grey, brown. I, of course, left those colours to the end. The brown was deep and rich and certainly an addition to my collection. So when I reached the last two dyes, black and grey, it took a little encouragement to actually do them. Once done, the BFL black was so deep and powerful and the silver silk was glowing.
Now that I have gone through all my colours once, I didn't want to go back to the beginning and do them again. So this time I took 2 colours and combined them to see what would happen. This time violet and hot pink made an awesome purple and well, what do we call that pink. Chartreuse and Emerald created a blend that is in between both of them and the second dye bath produced a blue green on the icicle. It sure was fun. Now if the weather gets nice again, I will continue with my mixed dyes. The first picture is the Blue Face Leicester and the second picture is the silk, mohair and icicle. Fun how they take on the colours differently