Progress

Voila, the next batch of dyed wool...


I'm finally sewing garments again and I happily discovered that cutting out patterns is much easier using rotary cutters.


Using the 28mm rotary cutter as a pivot point, I used my left hand to turn the piece as I cut. So easy!


I fused these pattern pieces to Pellon Quilter's Grid on Point which gives the tissue pattern some stability. The Grid comes with fusible on one side and a grid on the other, and it's transparent enough to be able to cut patterns on the wrong side too. It's also very easy to pin through. This method is so much easier than transferring to a non-woven pattern fabric.

Yesterday's Dyed Wool

Yesterday's dye pot yields today's wool yarns and rovings...


The dye color was a combination of sun yellow and a drop of bright blue to get a color that was close to lime green. On the piece below, I started with a tan wool, so the outcome was more like chartreuse.


On creamy white wool the lime is true and the color is variegated...



The lime was a little darker on the white yarn...


This multi-colored yarn, over dyed with lime, will make a fine compliment to the lime yarn.


Finally, the pink & brown yarn, as well as a blue, white, and sea green yarn became this new color of variegated lime green...


These colors will be wonderful in wool pincushions!

Wealth in Wool

It has been a fine week of dyeing wool roving. This was yesterday's batch...

And here is the week's worth of lovely wool...

Today's batch is in they dye right now and will be black variegated black.

Last night we started rolling wool to make my handmade pincushions. The first batch is in the washing machine right now and I'll have photos soon.

...Have You Any Wool?

This weekend I hand dyed some wool roving which will be used to make my handmade wool pincushions for our next vendor booth.

Roving is un-spun wool which comes in natural colored rolled balls; each of these balls is about the size of a small child's head...


The brown roving will remain that color and I'll use the cream roving for dyeing.

For my first try, I used a little to much dye in the bath so I had to rinse it a little more, but it turned out well. Of course, the magenta looks more fire engine red because of the dye concentration, but it's lovely. Here 's that batch drying over the deep sink...

The dye came from a "6 Dye Sampler" kit from ProChemical & Dye. I'll order more of the colors I really like, but today I'll mix the Sun Yellow and Forest Green to see if I can get a light bright green. More coming soon.

Until then, if you're looking for tutorials on dyeing wool, do a search on YouTube.com .