On the weekend, I finally stitched together the back for a quilt that has been in some kind of progress through most of the last year.
The blocks for the front are finished and I hope I have eco printed enough fabric for a border. A friend who was over on the weekend advised me about the sashing. So… now I need to get started on piecing the front together. Don’t hold your breath! Meanwhile, the saltbush seed I collected while we were on holidays is coming up and so are my vegetable seedlings, and I’m contemplating what to do with the home grown indigo and when I should do it!
Tag Archives: cotton
Leafy quilt back finished!
Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing, Sewing
Thanks for cycling! The bunting.
There is a new segment of cycleway near our place that has been one of the upsides of living beside a major engineering project for most of the last 2 years. It seems only right to celebrate. The new segment isn’t terribly long, but is one of those little pieces of path that make a big difference to a cyclist.
I started out with some bike themed fabric. It was originally intended as a shirt for a small bike loving friend… but he grew quickly into quite a large, keen cyclist and my sewing queue moves slowly sometimes. Some of the fabric became a bag and the rest was sitting there ready to go. I decided in the end that worrying about aligning the grain was beside the point for bunting, so relentlessly pieced leftovers together until there was just about nothing left.
Then I moved over into some purple fabric. It dates back over fifteen years to when there was a shop nearby that sold offcuts from sheet and quilt manufacturing. I made all kinds of things from those offcuts! This came in one of the odd shapes that I am sure could be explained by someone who had been to the factory: a square with three squared off corners and one rounded corner. Soon it was all triangles, some constructed from two smaller triangles. On went the lettering.
Some more of my vintage bias binding was pressed into action, and pretty soon…
Last night a friend was visiting and she was keen on hanging it, so we had bunting hanging before dinner.
Hopefully it will cheer up weary cyclists (and energetic ones) as they pass.
Filed under Craftivism, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
Travel Knitting
I have been travelling for work… and then my oldest friend invited me to his birthday… so I have been extending my carbon footprint by going to Perth for work, then to my friend’s birthday on my way home (for those who don’t know, Sydney is not on the way home to Adelaide, when you start out in Perth).
Anyway… in the hurry to leave home I managed to remember to pack travel knitting. I started out with a sock in progress. Eucalyptus dyed patonyle, destined for the feet of my Blue Mountains friends. The weather where they live calls for handknit socks.
These colours are the result of overdyes, where I didn’t like the initial colour and decided to try again. By the time I left for Perth, I had one sock knit and another underway and caused quite a bit of fascination among the project team by knitting in breaks and grafting a toe over lunch.
I had overdyed the rest of my patonyle more recently. It started out dyed with black beans (not as colourfast as I’d like) and plum pine (not at all colourfast).
These yarns went into my first attempt at the Michel Garcia organic indigo vat. I had reservations about my vat as I went… the Ph test strips I had bought turned out not to measure the part of the Ph spectrum I needed and in the end I ran out of time and should have left the vat to the next day. On the up side, the preparation of the vat all made sense and most of it went really well. I think my judgment about it was basically right, I just didn’t go with my judgment as I should have done. My friend dyed a doily:
I re-dyed the sock yarn, originally bought second hand at a garage sale.
Although I was happy with the finished colours, it turned out that I had hurried the indigo too much and I was left with crocking… the blue rubbed of on my hands a lot as I was knitting in Perth. This made it certain the finished socks would leave the wearer with blue feet and I finally decided to abandon them after a few centimetres, frogged and left the yarn in a bin in Perth. Sigh! That must be the fiirst dyeing fail I have pronounced irretrievable.
I had an alternative plan. I pulled out yarn I intended for a hat and chose one of the two patterns in my bag, Jared Flood’s Turn a Square. I wound the ball in my motel room and cast on. Here it is as I wait for the taxi to the airport in Perth.
The time difference between Western Australia (Perth) and the rest of the country is considerable, so even though the flight was four and a half hours, I left Perth at 10 am and arrived in Sydney at 5 pm, and here is the hat in the Sydney airport:
Here it is in Sydney about to depart for Adelaide next day…
I finished it on the way and started a second hat with the rest of the skein, top down. I’d call that a productive trip on many fronts!
Filed under Dyefastness, Knitting, Natural dyeing
Leaf prints of the week: Pecan and Eucalyptus on cotton
Last week there was some leaf printing. Eucalyptus Scoparia leaves, one of my favourites.
Pecan leaves, inspired by Lotta Helleberg (when I went to her blog to insert this link there was an especially delectable pecan leaf printed fabric on show, by complete coincidence) and by a wonderful lunch with friends who have a pecan tree. The leaves have been patiently waiting in my freezer.
Let me admit right here and now that I had some alum and tannin mordanted fabric which took no colour at all–I must have made some kind of mistake there!
As always, the thrill of seeing good things begin to emerge.
Then waiting to unwrap bundles. I saved these until I had a friend over for dinner who I realised would enjoy the reveal as much as I do.
Some pecan prints were better than others, but the good ones are lovely.
And the Eucalyptus leaf prints were all I hoped for and more.
Filed under Eucalypts, Fibre preparation, Leaf prints
A Community Celebration
As I read The Little Book of Craftivism, ideas kept popping into my head. This one took a little longer to execute than the mini banners. There is a row of immense, sugar gums (Eucalyptus Cladocalyx) over 100 year old in our neighbourhood which were scheduled to be cut down due to changes in the railway corridor. Many people in our neighbourhood were part of a campaign to save them.
We managed to save these trees (albeit very severely pruned) while dozens of others were cut down. People have been saying to me when they visit the nearby local neighbourhood centre how awful it looks now that all the trees that used to stand between the neighbourhood centre and the railway have been cut down. They often say how relieved they are that the ones we saved are still there–but they do not realise what went into saving them. They don’t even know those trees were threatened. There are still all night works and daytime works and continuing campaigns and about noise going on and many people in the area feel very discouraged living with the aftermath of all the infrastructure works. So I imagined bunting that read ‘these trees saved by community action’ and a bit of a celebration of our having actually succeeded in this part of what we have tried to do.
Well, I made the bunting. And another member of our local group emailed out the most beautiful invitation to come and hang it up and celebrate the continued existence of the sugar gums. And so a small local celebration, complete with our local MP Steph Key and our local councillor, Jennie Boisvert, who both put considerable effort into supporting our campaign. I wanted to thank the woman who stared the campaign and was its mainstay, so I made her a little leafy bag. Here it is filled with rolled up bunting ready to go and celebrate.
And here we are, after a highly entertaining hanging of the bunting.
I’ve made a tutorial on how to create this kind of lettered bunting, which you can find in the how-to page (link at the top of the blog) or here, if you’d like to try your own. I already have another plan, personally….
Filed under Craftivism, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
A squeak of glee and a visit to the beach
I was in Melbourne when I saw that India Flint had put out a new book: Stuff, Steep and Store. Yesterday (well, the day before I wrote this post–) it arrived in the mail and I gave out a squeak of glee. It is short but lovely, so there was one reading before bed and another over breakfast. I happened to be heading out to an early appointment at a suburb near the beach. Inspired as I was, and consequently full of exciting plans, I decided to go to the beach to dip some fabric (the last of a roll of cotton sheeting from a church fete) in the sea and collect seawater for later use. And, of course, for a walk.
I am my father’s daughter, so my walk was accompanied by the collection of glass shards from the sand. There was also the greeting of a lot of dogs and a smaller number of humans.
A great start to the day, and multiple dyeings to come.
Filed under Fibre preparation, Natural dyeing
More tree loving craftivism
My second ‘banner’ has gone up another neighbourhood tree. This one is my favourite E Scoparia. It was the first really promising dye eucalypt I discovered. It used to be home to a pair of piping shrikes, who nested there in their little mud cup for many seasons. In the last year it has acquired a nesting box and we’ve seen rosellas coming in and out of it.
This is the tree my friends and I have been mulching and weeding and we have planted in an understory of native ground covers, mostly forms of saltbush, which are now doing really well. If you have been reading a while you will have seen this tree protected from passing Royal Show foot traffic in earlier posts here and here. Those images show how much the groundcover project has progressed in the last 18 months or so. In the beginning, people would remove plant guards, pull out small plants soon after we put them in or just trample young plants by accident. Not any more. I think the evidence of care and the success of the surviving understorey plants generates more thoughtful treatment from passersby, and it’s clear that lots of local people now understand that their neighbours are making efforts that are transforming an almost bare patch of hard earth scattered with weeds and rubbish, into something lovely. I collected the rubbish that had landed under it this morning and maybe that is ebbing a little too.
So, four of us stood and admired this tree, delectable breakfast smoothies in hand, and tied on this little banner of admiration and appreciation.
And here’s the full length picture…
Filed under Craftivism, Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
Tree loving craftivism
While I was in Melbourne, I found Sarah Corbett’s A Little Book of Craftivism. Yes, it is literally small, but inspiring out of proportion to its size. It is about the work of the craftivist collective, together with proposals about how the reader might engage in their own craftivism.
For those who might be wondering… one definition of craftivism: ‘Craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper & your quest for justice more infinite.’ More at the link.
I loved this little book from the beginning. This is activism of a gentle, slow kind. It isn’t the only kind of activism the world needs. But every social movement needs a variety of approaches–I’ve participated in many–and gentle is one of them. This book is packed with organising wisdom, clear instruction, pictures that inspire and make you wish you had been there and examples of projects from the small to the enormous that offer plenty of scope for DIY.
For a view of the book and its content, click here. For a brief review with links to multiple other reviews and ways to purchase online other than through amazon, click here. To purchase from the craftvist collective itself, click here and check the sidebar.
Did I mention finding this book inspiring? I think it’s one of the highest compliments that you could pay to a book of its kind to say that I immediately wanted to go out and make some of the projects in this book and could immediately see places that could happen to good effect. Not only that, I tried my ideas out on my nearest and dearest and then created them. My ‘mini protest banner’ is a little different to the cross stitched versions in the book–but nevertheless the same concept.
I took:
- a calico sack from a local business for my banner background (I offered to take the offcast bags from a shop and they accepted)
- some not-so-glorious leaf print experiments for backing
- some leaf-printed collars and cuffs for my frame
- some eucalyptus dyed silk thead and
- some secondhand bias binding… and…
Before long I had made two banners. We hung the first one today. One of my friends offered the view that every day was a good day for this kind of event (I guess we’re friends in part because we agree on things like that!) so we had cool drinks of water and cherries and chat and then went out to admire the tree and tie on. The 6 year old present wants to make more banners, which is additionally promising.
This banner celebrates a river red gum (E Camaldulensis) that we managed to save from being cut down last year, with help from other local people and our local MP, Steph Key. It has a legally mandated 3 m exclusion zone around it to protect the root zone, but this is not being observed very well lately and I want the people responsible to know that we care. I had to measure the tree to be sure I had stitched on enough tape: 3.6 m (11′ 9”) around the trunk, well above the ground. To give you a sense of its size… and the relative size of the banner (which is in the picture), I give you the full view.
Filed under Book Review, Craftivism, Eucalypts, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
Leaf printed t shirts
Last year, three t shirts from the op shop (thrift store) found their way into my soymilk bucket. They have been sitting in a little pile since then, but recently they made their way into the dye pot. This one is for a treasured friend who has been waiting a while since I checked size with him. The first picture (of the front) gets the colour about right and the second one (further below) is inexplicably different though taken within minutes!
The leaves are from another friend’s Eucalyptus Cinerea. It needs trimming to keep it out of the hair and eyes of passersby and I have generously offered to help!
Yet another friend (perhaps I should ask my dear friends if they are happy to be named online!) visited on dyeing day so I gave her this next one and she designed its new leafy incarnation. On the day I am writing I brought it in to work still bundled and tied with string, and she opened it on her office desk over lunch. We experimented with putting these garments in a dyebath, rather than just into a simmering pot of water, and that is the reason for the overall orange that is strongest up near the neckline on the back where the fabric absorbed the dyebath most strongly.
I think her design is lovely…
The third t-shirt was a pale grey one. I bundled it up in the morning and gifted it, cooked, but still rolled and tied, to a friend who is completely enchanted by the eco-print process and who has been facing tough times lately. I’m hoping unwrapping that bundle gladdened her heart in these challenging times. It sure gladdened my heart to have her visiting us.
While we’re talking t-shirts… I couldn’t help noticing that two of the three were made in Bangladesh, a mighty long way from Adelaide. For anyone interested in viewing the global garment trade from the perspective of a single t-shirt (though not one of these leafy t-shirts!) Planet Money from US National Public Radio has made a series on the subject you might like to check out.
Hopefully that’s three op shop t-shirts that will now have much more exciting second lives, with much less travel involved!
Filed under Eucalypts, Leaf prints
Eucalyptus Nicholii?
Remember this bundle of leaves and my excitement about finally meeting E Nicholii, fully grown? The straight, narrow leaves below were supposed to be E Nicholii.
Well. E Nicholii is a well- and long-recognised dye eucalypt, described by Jean Carman and the Victorian Handspinners and Weavers Guild in their classic books, and prized by dyers I have spoken to who were using it in the 1970s and 1980s to obtain reds and oranges. So I was rather surprised to find this result from the best of several attempts:
I did get a roughly orange smudge on some of my fabrics from the ‘E Nicholii’. In the same pot, cooked for the same length of time and on fabric mordanted in the same batch, E Cinerea produced vibrant colour:
In the past, using trees I was entirely confident were E Nicholii (albeit small specimens) I have got something more like this:
These are blocks from a quilt I have been working on…
My own E Nicholii is a tiny specimen, surrounded by a personalised fence to prevent certain marauders with a tendency to dig up anything promising with no thought for the future.
The marauders came past to check what was happening as I took a photo of the tree.
How to explain this eco-printing result? I didn’t identify these trees myself but relied on someone else who was clearly knowledgeable, which is not to say any of us are above error. If I had identified them myself, I would say without hesitation that the dye pot is more reliable than my identification skills. But there are so many variables: these trees were mature while I have tried only young trees–all I have been able to find and identify with confidence. They were in relative shade and growing in a relatively cool spot… I just don’t know!
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Leaf prints
Local & Bespoke 