Dyeing my own yarn

And doesn’t that sound grand?

Well technically I did, and it was easier than I expected, but it was at a workshop I booked on, and so I had a fair bit of help and lots of guidance. To be honest dyeing wool isn’t something I was brave enough to try for the first time at home, and in reality I don’t think it’ll be something I’ll do at home in the future either, but it was great to try it out and to get a greater understanding of the process. Clearly dyeing one or two skeins, is way easier and much less effort than doing anything even remotely ‘in bulk’ and so my hat goes off to the small businesses where dyeing wool is their thing, they are truly amazing.

I’d seen on Instagram stories that the wool shop in Nottingham where holding workshops, and had one coming up that piqued my interest, and so that’s how I came to dye my own yarn. I spent a couple of hours in their workshop room chatting to the shop’s new owner, while MOH ran a few errands and enjoyed a solo coffee.

Unusually for me I actually had a plan for what I wanted to do with my newly dyed yarn; I’d seen a short sleeved jumper in a knitting magazine a week or so before which had caught my eye. It’s knitted in the round and it has a decorative slip stitch pattern with a multicoloured yarn - I think there’s was named hydrangea and the main colour of the jumper was a delicate pastel green. But as I’m never one for following the colours in patterns, that didn’t faze me, nor did attempting anything in the round.

I have another knitting project on the go, which has been put aside for the summer, so the actual knitting part shouldn’t cause me any issues either. Before I learnt to crochet, I was a knitter - and I’ve knitted many complex patterns in the past, though sadly I have none of these picture jumpers today. Oh how I wish I did!

But anyway, having a plan made a lot of sense as there were a lot of colours to choose from. I decided to go with colours I wear frequently - so pinks, greens, yellows and oranges, though I skipped the orange at the final moment.

The workshop included three 20g skeins and one 100g skeins, so I opted for the multi-coloured versions of the smaller skeins and a plainer - but not completely plain/solid colour - for the larger skein.

The smaller skeins were up first and they’d been soaking in a water and white vinegar solution to prepare them for taking up the dye, so placed on clingfilm and armed with my squeezy ‘ketchup’ bottles of dye I dabbed and dotted colour randomly along their lengths. I used four colours on the natural coloured yarn, two pinks and two greens.

Happy with the dye I dabbed and squirted on, the clingfilm was wrapped up and my skeins were off to the microwave to cook, and set the dye - who knew - while I set about putting a lot of mustard dye on the larger skein.

While I wanted it plainer, I didn’t want the mustard skein to be a uniform colour - that seemed a big ask for a first time dyer to be honest, and so I’m pleased with the variations that came out, and even the small area which has an element of darker green.

I think if anyone really wants a very precise colour, then it’s likely that this process isn’t for them and they should stick to large manufactured wool where they aim to deliver a standard colour for each and every ball of wool.

The skeins were wound and tied when they were mostly dry, but they needed to finish drying at home. I set them up over the clothes horse in our plant room, which is a lovely warm small room I use to dry my washing. It’s worth putting an old towel or some newspaper underneath as the water has to go somewhere, and gravity can take over.

And so I ended up with some pretty colourful skeins of yarn, and I’m more than happy with that.

I realised though that I needed twice the amount of mustard yarn, I could have added an extra large skein to my workshop had I given it more thought in advance but I hadn’t, and in the back of my mind I was sure I had a mustard skein of yarn at home, which I probably should use before buying even more yarn…

Thing is though when I checked, it was the wrong colour mustard - a more brown pigment, still lovely but not a good match for this newer mustard. Then I saw another skein (yes I have a few) which was a better match for the mustard, but is more colourful than perhaps I’d like for this project.

But the tone is right, and so now I’m convincing myself that I can use these together. I think I can, but as I’m not starting just yet I’ve a little while longer to muse over this.

I think the plan will be to start with the third skein (on the right above) and then switch to the plainer mustard, using the multi-coloured skeins as planned for the decorative pattern. Well, I think that’s the plan, for now anyway!

Learning to love my overlocker

At the start of the year I acquired an overlocker - thanks mum - but had little idea of how to use it. While I have all the manuals, I figured it would be easier to book myself onto a workshop to learn all about it - and to remove some of the Fear.

So I did just that and a couple of weekends ago I headed off to Mansfield for the first time - I didn’t see much of Mansfield apart from the one way system, but I’m sure I’ll be back to have a proper look at more than that at some point. My destination for the workshop was Sally Twinkles (aka Sewing Direct) for a workshop led by Tracey Symonds, who was a semi-finalist in series 4 of the Great British Sewing Bee.

After navigating the one way system more than once I got my bearings, found a car park, parked up and dashed over the road with my machine. Once settled I realised that the other workshop participants had their overlocker already threaded - but that at least meant Tracey had a machine she could demo on and I learnt where the threads should go first hand.

My first learning was that the four cones of thread were split into two for needles and two for the loopers - using four different colours for these meant it was easy to track what was doing what, and while mine are mostly pastels I quite like the idea of using different colours. The spool furthest right seems to determine which colour is on show, as long as you’re set up right.

A large part of the workshop was ‘to overcome the Fear’ - and the fear was real!

Tracey had us all testing our machine’s capabilities on different fabrics, encouraging us all to make a note of the settings for each so that once we knew and noted it down, we at least had a starting point - which makes a lot of sense.

We were overlocking, gathering, doing rolled and lettuce hems and flatlock seams like, well not like we’d only just learnt that’s for sure - and all the time building confidence, and reducing the fear. Tracey was a brilliant teacher - as you’d expect, she’s a retired teacher - though I think I was her problem child for the session! She was unflustered though and her ability to switch between the various makes and machines we had brought with and offer expert advice on each was impressive.

I left the workshop with my examples, which for me were an achievement. However I recognise that the pictures here may seem a little underwhelming, but believe me I wouldn’t have tried half of this had I sat alone with the manuals.

OVERLOCKING ON WOVENS (GREEN), GATHERING (FLOWERY MATERIAL) AND OVERLOCKING ON KNITS (STRIPED)

HEMS: LETTUCE (STRIPED) AND ROLLED (FLOWERY)

FLATLOCK SEAM (CIRCLES) AND OVERLOCKING A CORNER (DENIM)

Of course part of the reason there’s not much to show is that the overlocker trims as it goes, so as I went over and over the lengths of fabric my previous attempts were chopped off. Most were binned but some have the potential for use in collages, but I’ve yet to play further with that.

My other key learnings from the workshop, which I’m including here to remind me, were:

• Chain before starting, and chain at the end - it’s much easier to have a length of overlocked stitching at each end of the fabric, and it saves the machine eating the thread - which means it saves rethreading!

• The fourth spool is the colour you’ll see the most, so unless you’re very particular you can probably just change this one, however neutrals may work with many fabrics, test it first. Cream and grey are less harsh than white and black, and therefore could be more versatile.

• Deal with the ends, or they will come undone eventually. If you’re not overlocking at right angles then either zigzag over them using the sewing machine or thread back through with a large sewing needle.

• No pins near an overlocker ever.

• For the overlocked corners, move the fabric so it’s in a straight line and though there’ll be some loops which don’t catch, you’ll hardly notice them.

Trying it at home

I knew that if I didn’t try it at home fairly soon afterwards then the workshop would have been a waste of time. So the next day I set it up in my craft room, checked nothing had moved on the journey home and set about trying it for myself. I’m glad I did as even though I’d checked it one of the tension loops had spat out its thread, and my loops were a bit irregular.

But I fixed it - yay! That’s how good the workshop was!

Edging the valance

Then I could set about edging the material for one of my next projects. I’ve signed up for an Indian Block Print & Stitch class and needed to take along some fabric to print on, and they suggested old bedding would be fine. Which is good, as I’ve plenty of that - and when I was sorting out the towels to add to my new bathroom cupboard shelves, I found an old valance sheet which I hadn’t used for years.

Like most valance sheets it was a wotsit to iron, even though it has box pleats rather than frills. So it was repurposed - I cut the frill off, ironed it and set to it with my overlocker.

It was a long old piece of overlocking, but it served two purposes - proving to myself I can do this at home, and readying for some future projects. Don’t you just love it when things come together like that?

So if you’ve got an overlocker in your cupboard that you just don’t love (yet) then I can’t recommend highly enough booking yourself on a workshop and finding out what it can do - I bet you surprise yourself, just like I did!

Making an autumn wreath

A few weeks ago I saw a post on Facebook by The Flower Fairy here in Newark offering workshops to create an autumn wreath, and I thought why not.

I’ve tried Christmas wreaths before, with mixed results - they look ok on the table, and ok on the door for a while, but not as good as those in the shops created by professionals. So I signed up before first making sure the workshops could accommodate a novice.

The first step was to fill the wreath ring with moss, which isn’t something I’d done previously - and after a trim it looked ok - and still round!

Lucinda had provided all the materials for the workshop, including tons (probably not literally) of stems in a range of greens, oranges and whites to create the wreaths. The next step was to break these larger stems into more manageable sections, and end up with smaller pieces to create bunches to add to the mossy ring. As well as these there were rosehips, chinese lanterns, crab apples and grasses. I opted for the first two, knowing that I could use the crab apples and grasses from my own garden if I wanted to top up my wreath, or even make another at some point!

I spent the evening wiring small bunches of plants onto the mossy ring, while chatting to the women alongside me. It seems that I was so busy making my wreath that I didn’t take any more photos until it was done.

And I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I purposely chose not to make it symmetrical, as nature rarely is, and I like the natural look.

I’d not used moss on a florist ring before, and each bunch was secured by winding wire around the stems, using a single length for the whole way round - which seemed much easier than I remembered. Arriving home I put my newest treasured possession safely in the garage so that I could work out how to hang it the next day.

Of course, we didn’t have the right sized hook and nor did we really want to put anything too permanent on our new door, either of them. I knew that I’d be hanging this on our back door, which is the door we use - we rarely use our front door, and so wouldn’t get to admire my handiwork hardly at all.

If you look closely at the photo you can see a dark strip over the top of the door - that’s a very clever wreath door hanger, which hooks easily over the top of the door. The wreath fits into the hook, but I’ve also used the ribbon to tie it on so it’s a little bit more secure - hopefully!

I’m so pleased with it that I’ve already bought some florists wire and some large wire rings (I already had some small ones) - all I need when I’m ready to make another is some moss and some greenery. I’ve already been eyeing up the plants in our border and I’ll be keeping a keen eye on the hedgerows when we’re out walking.

But in the meantime, I’m going to indulge myself with a few more detailed pictures of the one that’s hanging on the door.