What have I been doing?

Well I didn't realise I hadn't posted for 2 weeks until I logged on today.
Nothing is wrong with me--well nothing that a bit of energy wouldn't fix anyway.
I have been making this little embroidery kit and a bag to store it in for the Guild Exhibition this year.
This will surely knock the socks of the other Guild members when they see it because I don't usually do things of this nature.
Why did I do it?
Well--I found this beautiful piece of pink and white cotton check fabric and it said to me "Do something different with me" so after much thought I decided to make this little embroidery kit and embellish it with Silk Ribbon embroidery.
I made the cord that is couched around the edges on the sewing machine by using the bobbin winder.





Then there happened to be enough fabric left over to make a dilly bag to store the kit in.
I didn't add embroidery onto the bag because I felt it looked better left plain.
Again I made the twisted cord on the sewing machine and I added four buttonhole loop carriers for the cord to go through.






I had intended to sell it at the exhibition but alas my daughter said she wanted it for a friend so........

More Dying

We also dyed silk ribbon-threads -braids and laces while we were at it and I am sure going to find it hard parting with these--but I know that I would only store them away and just look at them.
The first picture is the silk ribbon and threads-for some reason we don't have a green.




This bundle is the braids-laces and some motifs.

This is some silk velvet-very pretty soft colours.

This is silk dupion dyed in the same jars as the velvets above.
We had several metres of cotton lace that we dyed with the stuff I showed yesterday and for some reason it came out with big white blotches so Suzanne overdyed it with pearl grey which toned down the original colours and gave the white sections a soft muted colour.

Very happy with the result.


All we have to do now is iron all the stuff and package it--phew not looking forward to that job.

Our Dying Day Results

Finally I have photographed the stuff that we dyed recently to sell at the guild exhibition.
Each bundle was dyed in a jar-there are 5 different silk fabrics plus threads-laces and Silk ribbons.
We are a bit hap hazard with how much dye solution is poured into the jar so we would not be able to reproduce the colour-way exactly the same again.
Our idea is to produce one off colour-ways that are special--not a commercial amount.
The photos are true colours (thanks to a beautiful sunny day here) so I think they will sell well.
Sorry about the long line of photos but I don't know how to set them up in nice little boxes side by side.
The dyes we used were Procion-----------

Chartreuse and Purple---------
Old Rose and Pearl Grey----------

Bronze and Turquoise----------

Intense Blue and Fuschia-----------

Pumpkin Spice Sun Yellow and Intense Blue

Pumpkin Spice and Chino------------ Chino and Golden Delicous------------

Robins Egg Blue and Antique Gold-----------