dyeing | Teri Berry Textiles

Although I haven’t been able to blog much recently I have been working! Below are a selection of pieces I have been working on over the last few weeks…

These are a few brooches / pins inspired by a session with the Region 2 IFA ladies, they are just so much fun to make and one of the few things I can make relaxing in front of the TV 🙂

I finally finished the icicles / snowy night wall hanging that I started nearly a year ago! This is a fairly large piece, measuring approx 3ft x 2 ft.

I finished (and photographed) a new pair of gloves. I don’t know about you but I seem to be waiting for days if not weeks for enough daylight to take photos this month. Roll on spring!

The fishy reef nuno felt made a reappearance from the UFO box too, this is how it looked a few months ago.

Just adding some darker blue tones where the reef meets the water made a world of difference to the sense of perspective.

Then I got a bit paint happy…

It still needs some work, but it’s making progress, I foresee a trip to the sewing machine to add some tiny fish in the distance….

Some dyeing, the red and orange wool is corriedale that I expect will become a bag. The blues are merino which I have carded into batts and plan to use with the blue variegated blue silk pictured below.

My technique for variegated dyeing is totally random, I just scrunch up handfuls of fabric and stuff it into a bag, hence I was surprised to see a distinct pattern on this piece of silk:

I’m hoping to make a dress from the blue materials and combine it with some screen printing techniques from Ruth’s online class in January (click here for more information). If I can get the idea in my head to work, I plan to submit this dress to the Spinners Weavers and Dyers National Exhibition next year (no pressure Ruth! 😉 )

Whatever your faith or denomination I hope you have a wonderful break, filled with fun activities and surrounded by the people you love.

The lovely ladies at the Felting and Fiber Forum recently posted the third quarter challenge. I confess I have been a bit rubbish at completing these this year, although I did give some thought to the Q2 challenge and thankfully Q2 and Q3 are similar enough that I can transplant my idea from Q2 to the Q3 challenge.

I wanted to make a textural wall hanging using silk cocoons to add some extra dimension a bit like this but on a larger scale:

This quarter’s challenge is focussed on colour and we are to use the colours selected from a photo or image as seen by a colour selector program in a textile piece.

This is the image I chose, Mr TB took it on one of our Sipidan dives and 6 years on, it is still one of my favourites (one day I will get around to making a more literal interpretation of it in felt):

I ran the photo through 2 programs:

Colour Adobe

Palette FX

Of the two I much prefer the wider range of colours from Palette Fx so dyed some silk, yarn and cocoons alongside blending some merino and Norwegian wools on the drum carder in an effort to match 9 or 10 of the colours.

The results of the dyeing was interesting, I threw a mixture of materials into each bag filled with dye and acid solution expecting them to come out looking very similar.

Well the yellow did, only the yarn is a slightly deeper intensity:

And the cyan was similar, although again, the yarn is a stronger /deeper colour.

But the orange/brown gave me a complete range, the silk top and cocoons were the lightest and really quite orangey, while the silk chiffon is more of an orangey-brown colour, while the yarn is bordering on chestnut brown. Quite a range…. all from the same bag.

Is this just down to the light reflecting qualities of each material or do you think they are interacting (chemically) with the dye in different ways?

Here is the result of all the blending too, I’m including a couple of balls of merino that are similar to the colours generated by Palette FX and found a skein of sari yarn in my stash that is very similar to the purples. Not sure if it will make it into the final piece but I certainly have quite a range of fibres to play with 🙂

I’m really looking forward to putting the blue (second from left) with the yellowy-orange (second from right. They are complimentary on the colour wheel and of similar intensity so I’m expecting them to really make each other sing.

Now I just need to figure out how to assemble this wonderful pile of fluff into something interesting to hang on the wall…..

Teri Berry Textiles

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Category Archives: dyeing

Happy Holidays!

Q3 Challenge Part 1