Wound onto the bobbin and ready to go. The story of this yarn can be found here. It is the weft yarn, 100% alpaca and hand dyed, while the warp is 100% tough wool and also hand dyed to one of my favourite green shades.
The reason for the tough warp is WEAR. The cloth is going to be used to make a skirt and a cute one at that I hope!
It is more warp faced than I expected but I like it. The skirt will have two tiers, the next cloth to be woven being a darker shade.
To be on the safe side I thought I would knit a swatch with some of the natural dyeing I have been doing. I included yarn dyed with red cabbage and also yarn from the Mexican blossom bush.
I thought I should put it through the wash to test wash fastness. I totally expected fading.
I didn’t expect a complete colour change. The lilac colour in the skein turned a cruddy blue colour. Truly amazing. Whereas the green from the Mexican blossom bush was unchanged.
I didn’t buy the red cabbage, it appeared in my fridge, the first time I have ever owned one.
“The red cabbage (Brassica oleracea) contains pigments known as anthocyanins. Anthocyanins belong to a large group of water-soluble natural pigments responsible for the attractive colors ranging from strawberry red to the blue color of most fruits, flowers, leaves, and some vegetables. Anthocyanins are commercially used as a colorant in acid solutions such as soft drinks. At various H+ concentrations these compounds rearrange their molecular structures giving rise to different colours.”
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I decided to experiment. Boiling the cabbage gave the liquid the colour above right.
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Into the pot I placed a hank of alpaca, with some silk roving and merino roving. An immediate colour change to ruby red. Mmm, maybe because of the alum mordant.
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These are the colours achieved after a number of rinses – left pic from top: merino wool, silk and alpaca. I love the soft natural colours.
A big question mark at the moment is whether the colours will survive a wash or two or more. I’m not too hopeful after the reading I have done. But, nonetheless, it is all a fascinating learning experience.
This photo looks so luscious and creamy. It is white silk fabric and cream silk/cotton fabric soaking in water in preparation for the dye pot.
Leaves from a blue gum and red onion skins rescued from the dye pot – all wrapped up tightly and tossed into the remnants of the red onion skin dye pot.
The marks obtained on the silk/cotton fabric – looks even better in the flesh.
DEFINITIONS
“SPACE DYEING is a technique used to give yarn a unique, multi-colored effect. While a typical skein of yarn is the same color throughout, a skein of space dyed yarn is two or more different colors that typically repeat themselves throughout the length of the yarn.”
“A ROVING is a piece of fibre which has been combed, drawn into a clump, and then twisted slightly to hold the fibers together and to prepare them for spinning and/or felting. SLIVER and TOP have a similar meaning to rovings.”
After confessing to Jude about taking a tiny piece of her space dyed roving ( and spinning it ) I received a slight dressing down, and then she agreed to try and replicate the same colours in some of the commercially spun alpaca fibre.
The end result of the furtive spinning of pilfered roving. A tiny piece of roving goes a long way.
Judy, the master dyer at TAFE, at work.
The alpaca yarn soaking in hot water.
The first addition – black.
The second addition – red.
The third addition – yellow.
Just a slight stir to meld the colours.
Let it simmer gently until the water runs clear which means all the dye has been attached to the fibres.
Almost the end result. It was decided that it needed a bit more oomph so it was returned to the pot with a little more black dye.
Still to take the photograph of the finished product.
While waiting patiently for our commercially spun alpaca yarn to arrive we have easily kept busy on other projects.
Here is Georgie weaving a beret on cardboard. In the background you can view our revamped room. Much more civilised now. Oh and BTW, Georgie has a sore knee. She isn’t really that lay back.
And Jill and Rocky hand spinning alpaca fibre.
Jill is the most productive, spinning and knitting beautifully. Below is a wee bit of her hand spun alpaca yarn.
And Georgie was unable to wait. She warped up with an unknown from the store room and used hand spun alpaca by Rocky for her weft. Georgie is experimenting with lace weaves for her alpaca project.
And I stole some fibre that had been dyed for another class. I walked past it, saw the colours and couldn’t help but take just a small bit to spin up. I love it. On the bottom left is the single thread and on the right is the plied result. Should have pinched the whole lot.
Jill again. More hand spun alpaca yarn. Beautiful stuff.
And another ebay mistake! I bought quite a large amount of tussah silk from some guy who was destashing his weaving studio. It looked luscious so I bought a kilogram of the stuff. This is the photo supplied on ebay.
Here is what I got. Very beige with no sheen and it sheds. I hate shedding. When will I learn? I’ve washed it and whacked it but it still sheds, otherwise it could still have been used in some project .
Each Tuesday morning we congregate in the art department at the Sherwood campus of Deakin University at Warrnambool.
Below is an assortment of alpaca fleece spun by Jill.
Jill decided to experiment with the brown and white plied yarn and dye it blue. These are the results. The verdict is still out.
Jill bought in her Majacraft spinning wheel to show me. She loves it and now it is on my wish list.
Here is Georgie warping up for her first alpaca piece. Georgie is concentrating on lace weaves for her theme.
THE OTHER STUFF
The flower ( not sure what it is) was photographed for an assignment on ‘composition’ for the Photoshop course I am doing.
And these birds are corellas. There are lots of them around at the moment, having a distinctive squawking noise. They also seem to be public enemy number one in many parts of Victoria for the damage they do to crops and the environment.
I tried lemon scented gum leaves for the second time with the thought that I may have failed the first time, but alas no…will use for over dyeing in the future.
Hate to admit it but this looks somewhat better than in real life.
As with all of the silk fabric in this post I placed it into a pot that had been sitting with soggy blue gum leaves for a long time, thinking I would get a rich colour but alas no…I must have exhausted the dye from the previous dyeing session.
In a few places you can just see where I used banksia leaves as a resist and used my favourite – red onion skins. I believe the really bright splotches came from the juicy red onion layer beneath the actual skin layers. Job to do – confirm this.
This piece was also wrapped around a tin. Not sure how the black colour happened.
This piece had been dyed before but was fairly insipid so I threw it in for a second go. I had placed moldy unknown leaves on it that had been stored in a plastic bag, and tied it into a parcel.
Tulips (dried out) and kangaroo paw, wrapped around an iron bolt and placed into a separate container in the pot. Nothing to write home about.
My favourite. This one saved me from despondency. And it was the most straightforward – an insipid result from a previous session, screwed roughly around a rusty piece of iron.
Had to add this image. When I started photographing the silk I hung it in front of a window. The blue and green are sky and grass. Would be great if it was the real thing but alas no…
Which translates into leaf prints and dyeing from nature.
It is truly amazing how a new branding can completely change a person’s concept about an activity that has been in existence for centuries and very clever of those people who do the re-inventing.
I am so enjoying collecting foliage, wrapping it up into felted or fabric bundles, throwing foliage and bundles into an old pot and seeing what happens. It is such a restorative pastime. And it even smells glorious.
Into these pots I put blue gum from my mother’s property. In the back pot I also added a rod of copper to see if there would be any difference in the colours obtained. There wasn’t.
Into this pail I put some cotton and soaked it in milk overnight and hung it out to dry before dyeing it. I would really like to be able to produce vibrant colours on cotton. Silk is gorgeous but not quite as functional as cotton.
I also tried a kangaroo paw that I have growing in a pot.
The kangaroo paw left the marks on the left of the photo and bloody hell, I can’t remember what made the leaf marks on the right. I am going to have to be a lot more rigorous with my record keeping.
I love making pre-felts and can’t wait to put all my pieces together and felt into one large piece. Knowing me though, this will be a long process.
Brilliant markings from blue gum and it’s buds.
Below is the markings from Bushy Yates – my favourite piece of fabric so far.
This is the cotton I soaked in milk. I wrapped it around red onion skins and bloody hell, can’t remember what else. I am getting very weird looks from the checkout chicks when I hold up my bag of onion skins for them to check. But I’m really liking the deep purples they produce.
Not sure but maybe lemon scented eucalypt.
Not sure but the orange print is probably Bushy Yates. Definitely need to take better records.
A gratuitous picture from Granny.
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