Saturday, January 19, 2013

I've been Dye-ing to Tell You

Have you ever taken a class at Craftsy? Check out www.craftsy.com and you can see what I'm talking about. These are online classes you take, but you do it on your own time. It's all pre-recorded. The teacher responds to questions as well as other students responding. Some cost money and a few are free. Some are kind of steep in price, but they offer specials frequently.

After Christmas they had a huge sale. I used some gift money to buy a few classes. Two of the classes are about how to dye. I am so glad I'm typing that and not saying it. LOL! One is simply about dyeing fabric and the other is about batik. I don't have the equipment yet for batik and I don't have the official fancy dye for either course (which is actually cheaper than the stuff I have, but the shipping is high & no one sells it locally). I have been playing with the dyes I do have at home. The teacher has shown us how to fold the fabric for different effects. I have no idea which folds I did on these, but thought I'd share a couple of my first attempts.


 As you can see, the first two have vibrant color and cool patterning. The bottom one, well, I'm chalking it up to experience. Or lack thereof. I used a pale blue shade of dye then added a touch of purple to the water. It pretty much did nothing. I think I later redyed it with some other colors. I have other pieces I've done different things with. Bubble wrap makes a really cool almost honeycomb design! Spare pennies wrapped up make, well, dots! LOL!

It's not as if I have nothing to do, but I enjoy this and hopefully can make some pretty enough dyed pieces to sell. Natalie said I should make charm packs out of them (packs of 5" squares). It's an idea!

I have several purses in the middle of construction. I need to get those finished & listed on Etsy!

Hope you have a splendid day!