A Post Before Getting Busy!

After looking for lots of holiday ideas the past week, I realized I'm really short on time for many of them. Yep, already!

Here's the vintage motif I tried using clusters on. The original has another round of rings with tiny chains all around the outside framing this part. I decided to stop here for now. I got into my drawing software but it was too late and I have to re-educate myself on it so no diagram for now. Here's the notation:

(3 ds, --) 7x, 3 ds, clr (-- is medium picot, not small)
mock picot to climb to next round
[Ch 3, rw
R 2-1-1-2, clr,rw,
ch 3 + to next p, rw] Repeat around, joining last ch to mp where 1st ch started.
last round
Ch 7-7-7-7, j to base of ch join from prior round all around. On the second p, I made the cluster but you could make a josephine ring or leave it as a picot or put beads there. Your choice. I haven't heard back from Bina yet about showing the cluster technique.

This is the last of my dye play last weekend. It's been hanging above the sink for days, waiting for me to pluck it down! The crochet piece at the top is actually an edging that came from a linen circle that was damaged beyond repair. There are two places in this edging that are damaged too so it has limited use but I love the colors.

The next edging is one I've shown before in its original state. I was intrigued by the crocheted bullions and asked if anyone could come up with a way to tat them. Ruth Perry responded in less than 24 hours with a way! The link to her pdf are not is now working so I can't post them. This edging has some damage too and is not very long so again, limited use.

I am not sure what kind of lace this next one is. It looks woven and I find it often in vintage laces. I was surprised at how well it took the dye because I thought it was a synthetic fiber. Apparently it's natural! I like the way the colors turned out on this too. I wrapped this one around a cardboard cylinder (covered in plastic wrap) and then painted a color down each of three sides.

The last one is a short strip that I was trying the new colors out on: sage green, mink brown, azure blue, oxblood red, deep orange

This one is yards and yards of crochet, beautiful crochet but there is a damaged section in the middle. I couldn't find a way to wrap this successfully so I tried bundling it with rubber bands, like in tie dye. I didn't have the rubber bands all that tight so the dye seeped in. There are a few places that are lighter but the dye reached all of it. I like the color mix but I have no idea what I will do with it. The lace is wide and I'm not sure yet if it is crocheted in rows or in length. If it's in length, I can cut the bad section out but if it's in rows, it will be a challenge to cut and not have the whole thing unravel.

And believe it or not, this is what I would label
FAIL!

It was saturated in color so I don't know why it came out so weak looking unless the thread has polyester in it. I didn't crochet it so I don't know but that would be my guess. It also feels stiff compared to the other laces. I will try to overdye it in the next session with a brown to make it look like faded vintage.

That's it for today!

The leaves will soon be gone. These are from a maple outside the parking garage where I work. I zoomed in really close. There are still leaves on about half of my trees at home but they continue to drift down. The wind has been picking up lately and usually sometime in November we have a few days of bitterly cold rain and wind and they all come down within 24 hours. Today it is beautiful. Sunshine brightly shining, the temperature just cool enough to need a sweater or jacket, and the leaves are offering their last shout of glory.

Friday night was opening night for our lace display at TAF. I'll post more about that later. Saturday I met with lace member Sally again and we dyed our little fingers off! Sally has a new house that she's been in for only a few months. Last time we did the dying in her garage, with the door open to let the light in and a light breeze. It was too windy this time and without the door open, there isn't enough light so she decided we would do this in her kitchen. "Brave woman," I thought to myself but we learned before the afternoon was over that the dye didn't take on either the counter top or the floor. She didn't think it would because of the materials it was made of but we couldn't know for sure until something happened. One of her rubber gloves tore at one time and there were a few drops on the floor that cleaned right up. Some dripped when getting some out of the basket container and that cleaned up easily too. Our fingers didn't fare so well, however.

I actually started with some odds and ends of old lace that was damaged, mostly crochet but there is another woven piece that even Sally (a textile expert) wasn't sure about. I wanted to get the feel of it again before getting to the pieces I cared about.

Do you know how FAST time flies when you're having fun??? We were 3 hours into it before I realized how long we'd been at it and I still didn't have my favorites done!

I ended up working on all these pieces faster than I should have since Sally had another commitment and we were both getting tired. Even so, I'm happy with most of it. These maple leaves truly do reflect the bright autumn colors of the real thing. I just realized that if I'd had a 5th leaf, I could make a single maple out of the five!

Here are the oaks. Oak leaves usually aren't as colorful as other kinds. I decided to stay with browns and greens. Next time I will go for some golden greens too.

The small leaves were quick and since I didn't know exactly how I will be using them, I stayed with greens. We had used up all the lemon dye earlier so I just used the chartreuse for the yellow/light green accents. The lighter colors give the illusion of new leaves.

Again, I wasn't sure what I would use these for so I stayed with the traditional greens. I should also mention that we used a stronger mix this time. I think we can go with less next time. I also didn't do as much diluting and mixing of colors although they mixed a lot on the lace itself.

I like how these turned out but I would have liked to have played with these more. Next time I will play with values more. Time was getting short at this point though.

I scanned this one separately since it's different and with the tassel, it just made the rest of the bookmarks fuzzy when scanned together. The top is oxblood red and the bottom is deep orange. I just dipped each end in the color and let them come together in the middle.

I'll show some of the crochet bits in another post. I'm thinking they'll probably be used in embellishing something that hints of CQ. So, next time, along with shade values, I hope to work with warms and cools. Seems like the majority of my tatting is going in the dye pot these days!

This isn't the greatest scan because it was raised in some places and I had to put a fabric background to cover it instead of the scanner lid. I tried both ways. This is the brightest and clearest in spite of the shadows. This is the last of the batch. I rinsed them this morning and blocked them. As you might guess, much of this is shuttle endings and mistakes but there are a few good pieces too. I really wanted to see if I could dye the little blue rosette at the top one color and the leaves a different color without them blending together into one color. I was partially successful. Most of the blue is in the blossom and most of the green is in the leaves. The problem is that the whole thing is wet from the presoak so the color is naturally wicked into whatever is touching. I could dye one segment and hang it so that the color stays in that area. Then presoak (?) again at another session and do the leaves alone. That sounds like an awful lot of trouble. Maybe I wouldn't have to presoak for as long the second time, maybe just enough to get wet and in that case, I could only dip the part to be dyed. Hmmmmmmm....I'm trying to keep track of all these "mental notes".

I wasn't going to dye any skeins of thread but at the last minute the night before, I wrapped two skeins of Lizbeth white, since I had nothing to lose there. The odd thing was that they floated in the presoak solution. I had to keep pushing them down. While I mostly liked the colorway that resulted, I was disappointed to see large amounts of white spaces that were not planned or expected. I'm assuming it didn't take the dye well for the same reason it kept floating, whatever that is.

Someone asked what I was going to do with all of this. I didn't preplan anything special since I knew it was all experimental. There are some pieces I don't like and some I love. The edgings can always be used on something. Flowers and butterflys can always go on/in cards or on a fabric landscape. The shuttle endings and mistakes are generally destined for crazy quilting, embroidery or cards.

Speaking of edgings, I wanted you to have a better look at these. The top one is a vintage pattern that I mean to write out in modern terms and add to the pattern links. I loved the way the "flowers" look vintage. I think I started with grape and then added lemon or the other way around. The combination seemed to "age" each other. I would probably pick a different green colorway next time but this one is okay. It tends to bluish tones in some areas and yellow tones in other areas so it works okay with the grape/yellow flowers.

The zigzag edging was a play with shades of brown and it's what inspired my results with the cross. The edging was purely accidental but once I saw it, I knew I wanted to be more deliberate with the colors on another piece.

The Hen & Chicks edging was one of the last edgings I colored and I hadn't used greens all that much yet so decided to go with blues/greens. I didn't really have a large selection of red/yellow to work with but maybe next time. I have a yard of this edging made which enlarges my options for usage.

And then the simple ring/chain edging I mentioned before. I think it's about 24" long. Lots of options for this one too.

The first two edgings were painted laying down since they are short. The last two were wrapped on cylinders; H&C on a big cardboard cylinder and the other on a straw,covered by saran wrap. I mentioned in yesterday's post how I painted the straw laying down and the H&C with the tube standing up.

Someone came out this evening and cut up the tree enough to be off the house and garage so that the insurance adjuster can make an assessment. While that was happening, I cut out the outfits for the sock monkeys I made awhile back. I hope to sew those tomorrow afternoon.

I haven't tatted anything yet today but I did do some drawn thread stitching that I'm practicing. It will be on my lace blog.

And I'm off to stitch/tat/watch tv/relax!