Space Dyeing Heaven!

When we both had small children, my friend Moira and I used to set aside a day every year when we would find all the white cotton and silk fabrics  and threads and braids that we had stashed and we would spend a heavenly day space dyeing them into luscious colours. We used to buy neutral coloured things to keep for dyeing days. So if we ever saw silk velvet or linen threads or great cotton sewing yarns we would add them to our stash and keep them ready!


There is nothing quite as unpredictably exciting as throwing  dyes onto a pile of all kinds of threads and seeing them do their magic.  


Life has got so busy that we haven't done this for about 3 years but on Friday we finally both managed to find half  a day when we could  have one of our special sessions and we both had a really great time.


So here is how we started:  Two of the trays of undyed stash...

You can see that I dyed some things that were beautifully textured  but not exciting in colour at all!

This next photo is of the threads with the dyes spaced at intervals for the colours to merge together for a red based batch. And one of the green batch  merged in the dye bath.


Would you like to see the results??

There are crochet doileys, silk velvet, cotton scrim, Broderie Anglaise cotton, and some cotton braid.

These are the silk and cotton threads. The colours are so much brighter in real life and the sheen on the silks is wonderful..

Aren't they fab? I love the way the true colours are only really visible when they are dry and then you can see the colours blended through the fabrics and cotton and silk threads.


This is the perfect way to spend a day when you have lost your creative mojo or when you just need to be inspired with colour. I can't wait to sew with these and use them in stitch projects, fabric books and with felt...... I may spend quite a while just stroking them though! Heavenly!