Making Cloth and Patchwork Beasts

First an update on the avocado dyeing. Dyeing with the avocado pit, chopped up and in the sun for a few weeks, was not successful for me. I probably didn't leave it in the jar long enough but the dye that was picked up by the fabric rinsed right out leaving the original fabric color.

I have been busy creating story cloth and patchwork beasts in the online classes that Jude Hill has offered. She is so generous with her information and I have gotten lots of inspiration from her lessons and learned lots of new techniques. I have posted some pictures of some of the pieces still being worked on.

More avocado dyeing and overdyeing...

Even though these fabrics were dyed exactly the same way as the ones in the previous posting, results were different. More beigey than pink. Did some overdyeing just to see what would happen to the black and whites and added some beige lace and white cord after before picture was taken. Will be trying beet juice dyeing next.

I think it's pink....

Experimenting with avocado dyeing goes on. This time I used NO MORDANT and did not use a stainless steel pot. I scored the avocado peel and placed the peel right side up in the pot. Put the fabric on top of the peel and then covered all with water. Heated the covered pot to a boil and then simmered for about 1 hour. I let that sit for 24 hours and then just rinsed the fabric. The shade of pink is a bit darker than in the picture. After 24 hours there was hardly any of the dark color left on the peel.

Before and After dyeing

More experimenting in progress, so stay tuned. The cut-up pit is still out in the sun, used some of the meat closest to the peel and wrapped it in a fabric bundle and put it out in the sun and am now over-dyeing some fabric.

                                                                                                                              

What a difference the rain makes....

Puffy Pouch for Carrying Threads

I made these puffy pouches for my quilt bee buddies when we had a gift exchange in May. I never did get a chance to make one for myself until now using the fabrics I bought in NYC last year. It's a great size for carrying my quilting threads and needles. You have a choice of 2 closures and I did the velcro closure. If you would like to make one for yourself, this is where I found the tutorial.

Results of Avocado Peel Dyeing

Well, I must say I'm a little disappointed.  There's a definite change in the color of the fabrics but I'm not sure I can say that any of them looks pink---maybe a very subtle pink.  They are shades of beige to me. I left them in the dye pot overnight so the fabric was in the dye for a total of about 18 hours. The biggest change was to the piece of white wool.  I still have the cut-up pits to play with but I'm going to leave those in the sun for a couple of weeks before I add fabric. I've ordered a couple of books from the library on dyeing with natural materials so I'll keep you posted with my experiments.