Friday 4 September 2009

To dye

In the absence of a camera to take photos of my new items I decided to lay of the prospect off instructing Mr MDS upon an evening in point and shoot, thereby preventing any further eye strain from peering at dark fuzzy images.

I feel obliged to share the rest of my wares and I hope to shoot the lot this weekend on the blackberry if it is sunny. I do intend to buy a new camera but I have my heart set on a Nikon digital SLR, so am saving pennies now for this purchase, so meanwhile the blackberry it is.

Anyway yesterday i took advantage of no rainfall and decided as well as writing the introduction to my dissertation, I'd dye a cardigan. I basically stained my lovely white cardigan with sun screen lotion on the inside of the sleeves. After a few removal tricks I admitted defeat and put plan B in to operation. Luckily I had a hand dye sachet of Dylon's tulip red and converted the washing up bowl into my dye receptacle. The instructions are easy to follow and my only top tips would be make sure your rubber gloves aren't leaking - I have a slightly reddish right hand currently, and do stir as instructed during the dying period - this ensures an even distribution of dye on the garment. You don't need to stir very much if you are tie dying.

the prepared victim




my dyes supplies from John Lewis


an empty bottle of wine holds the cardigan down

the end result a tulip red cardigan drying on the line

13 comments:

  1. You made it look so easy and not at all frightening... :) I've been tempted to dye some of my knits, but just a thought of it would always create a feeling of panic & stress... Perhaps I'll just give it a go. :)

    x

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  2. Fantastic! I recently dyed some things olive green in the washing machine and the results are very good, (except one dress that I realised had too much nylon stitching which doesn't dye, and the stitching was quite messy, so looked odd. Oh well!)

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  3. This is such a good idea, I have a tshirt with an unremovable stain - if it's sunny this weekend i'll give it a go!

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  4. I really like that colour!

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  5. Fantastic job, darling! Can't wait to see you wearing the lovely finished product!

    xoxox,
    CC

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  6. I just had a dyeing adventure myself recently. Isn't it a fun way to breathe new life into old duds?

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  7. Hi there-great stuff, a nice new cardi for autumn now!!

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  8. Great idea with the wine bottle - I always find things try to float to the top when I attempt any dyeing.
    Hope your cardi lives to fight another day!

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  9. Hmmm....I've never tried this. I think I'd be too scared.

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  10. I love your blog - thanks for taking the trouble to comment on mine.
    I look forward to seeing you wear the cardigan.
    Janex

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  11. This is terribly crafty of you, were you happy with the results? xx

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  12. Top Bird - the results were perfect and I went on to do more - a post on that later this week. I'm very crafty!

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