Sunday 22 March 2015

A Facebook story

This week I have told a story installments on Facebook about a shetland vessel that I dyed. For those of you who don't do Facebook I am going to repeat it here.

I made a shetland vessel from white and moorit coloured fibres with the aim of stitching it and then dyeing it. I am actually still exploring the best way to felt with shetland and it seems onto devour soap and need loads of water.

Here it is before stitching.

I stitched it with linen and silk threads and thought it looked more stylish with a cuff.

Now to dye. My first thoughts was to use some of the onion skins I have been saving but I decided to save them for a less prototype project and use the dried up skins of two pomegranate that I have also been storing . I deviated from my usual practise of keeping kitchen and dyeing equipment completely separate and first blitzed the pomegranate skins with water in my food processor.

The vessel was then heated at simmering point with the extracted colour from the pomegranate and left to soak over night.

After dyeing it looks paler than I would have ideally like , with not much variation of colour between the wool , silk and linen,

But with the threads sorted and a slate plinth I am quite pleased with the final effect. Thanks to Dave Mercer for thIs photograph .

 

 

 

 

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