Berry Picking and Dyeing Fabric
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I spent this weekend at the farm, and Sunday morning I went out to take some photos and to go berry picking, as there were some lovely brambles/blackberries ready for picking. I had two reasons for going berry picking, the first one to eat them of course, and the second one to try my hand at dying some cross stitch fabric (aida this time) with some natural ingredients. Surprisingly enough I wasn't even remotely tempted to eat as I picked the berries, and so I came home with about 1.5 kilos worth of berries.
Don't they look lovely in this bowl. Both my grandmother and my mother were surprised at the quantity of berries I brought home. I didn't even pick the majority of them, because they were too far into the brambles, and I didn't feel like getting my arms all scratched up, so I only went for the easy-to-reach ones.
So after lunch I grabbed about 50-100g of these lovely berries, which by the way were really delicious, and put them in the machine to liquidize them. I got the consistency to a thick paste and then went to get my precut fabric.
The first piece I tried is used seeds and all and poured a generous amount onto the fabric in a bowl and then had some fun spreading the past all over the cloth to make it even. When I was satisfied I squeezed all the excess paste out of the fabric and gave it a light rinse in water to remove as many of the seeds as possible.
I then experimented with adding more water and put the rest of the paste through a sieve to use only the liquid part of it.
The results are these pieces of lovely coloured fabric. I already have ideas on how to use them, and I'll be using some pink silk that I got from Stoney Creek in a bag of threads and some light coloured DMC/Anchor floss. I've been having a go at designing my own patterns and I'll most like be using them to make some gifts for Christmas.
By the way, the fabric still has a lovely smell to it from having used natural product instead of dye.
Using the berries wasn't my first attempt at dyeing though. Some time ago my mum cooked some beetroot and I decided to give it a go, but the fabric didn't come out as nicely as I thought it would, seeing as the water was a gorgeous deep red. The results can be seen in the photo below, they're just a beige colour with a slight pink tint to it (not really visible in the photo)
Have already planned on dyeing some more fabric with the berries, especially the darker colours, so will need to go through my stash and find some smaller pieces or otherwise I'm going to have to cut up some of my big pieces.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I spent this weekend at the farm, and Sunday morning I went out to take some photos and to go berry picking, as there were some lovely brambles/blackberries ready for picking. I had two reasons for going berry picking, the first one to eat them of course, and the second one to try my hand at dying some cross stitch fabric (aida this time) with some natural ingredients. Surprisingly enough I wasn't even remotely tempted to eat as I picked the berries, and so I came home with about 1.5 kilos worth of berries.
Don't they look lovely in this bowl. Both my grandmother and my mother were surprised at the quantity of berries I brought home. I didn't even pick the majority of them, because they were too far into the brambles, and I didn't feel like getting my arms all scratched up, so I only went for the easy-to-reach ones.
So after lunch I grabbed about 50-100g of these lovely berries, which by the way were really delicious, and put them in the machine to liquidize them. I got the consistency to a thick paste and then went to get my precut fabric.
The first piece I tried is used seeds and all and poured a generous amount onto the fabric in a bowl and then had some fun spreading the past all over the cloth to make it even. When I was satisfied I squeezed all the excess paste out of the fabric and gave it a light rinse in water to remove as many of the seeds as possible.
I then experimented with adding more water and put the rest of the paste through a sieve to use only the liquid part of it.
The results are these pieces of lovely coloured fabric. I already have ideas on how to use them, and I'll be using some pink silk that I got from Stoney Creek in a bag of threads and some light coloured DMC/Anchor floss. I've been having a go at designing my own patterns and I'll most like be using them to make some gifts for Christmas.
By the way, the fabric still has a lovely smell to it from having used natural product instead of dye.
Using the berries wasn't my first attempt at dyeing though. Some time ago my mum cooked some beetroot and I decided to give it a go, but the fabric didn't come out as nicely as I thought it would, seeing as the water was a gorgeous deep red. The results can be seen in the photo below, they're just a beige colour with a slight pink tint to it (not really visible in the photo)
Have already planned on dyeing some more fabric with the berries, especially the darker colours, so will need to go through my stash and find some smaller pieces or otherwise I'm going to have to cut up some of my big pieces.
1 comment:
Oh wow! What gorgeous berries and even more gorgeous fabric. Thanks for the tip - I like using natual items to dye also. Will be watching to see what you create next. :o)
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