Pink Crochet Top Finished

This is me wearing the pink crochet top. It's beautifully cool to wear as it is very fine cotton. I think I might add a few more flowers - although most of my friends seem to think it is finished as is.

I have 20 rows to go for the sleeve on the Splendid Wren coloured top and then it will be ready to assemble.

More Dyeing Fun

I played with the dyes that arrived from KraftKolour. I mixed the powders (about 50/50) to get an orange from the red & yellow, a purple from the red & blue, and a green from the blue & yellow. These pieces of fabric are the results of the baggies "cooking" in the sun using only one colour per piece so I have a colour reference for the future. I mixed up far too much dye so had a go later in the week as well with some yarn. And I've still got some mixed up dye left. Apparently they gradually lose reactive strength once mixed with water so I'm probably not going to get much else if I try to use them - but I will chuck something in to see what happens. If it doesn't work I haven't lost anything as I can always dye it again. I really like the Rubine.

This is the yarn that I think looks like the plumage of the Spendid Wren. I first dyed the yarn blue, then overdyed with red, purple and rubine. I was so pleased with it I started crocheting a top for myself as soon as it was dry! It will be a miracle if I look as good in this as the wren does in his finery :-)

Crochet embellishment 3

I crocheted a few pink flowers last night so that I could see the effect of them grouped together on the t-shirt. I've made all different ones - just making them up as I went along. I like the look of these against the uniform and regular half treble crochet I used to make the basic t-shirt. I much prefer this self-coloured textural look to the embroidery experiments I did previously. So, lots more crochet flowers coming up.

Most of today has been spent making up orders and replenishing stock. I'm off to a retreat this weekend and taking my goodies to sell there. I'm taking my Seven Sisters quilt so that I can continue quilting it, Karen's Konstellation in case I finish the Seven Sisters as I don't think I 've got that much more of the centre panel to go, and the pink thread so I can crochet some more flowers. These make a nice break from hand quilting so I don't get too achy from doing one thing all the time. Knowing me I'll probably pack quite a few other things to do too even though I should have learned by now that I always take too much.

I took on newsletter duties for the WA Fibre & Textiles Association recently so I am currently compiling my first issue. As is usually the case with these things this first issue seems to be taking me forever. I looked at my schedule yesterday and frightened myself with all that I have to do over the next month. I am determined to keep blogging - although I will miss a few days while on retreat.

crochet embellishment 2

These are the two yarns I had in mind for embellishing the pink t-shirt. The multicoloured one is very slubby and proved too difficult to weave through the crochet. Weaving also damaged the yarn. I didn't like the effect of the purple and pink variegated yarn once woven although it was easy to weave as it is smooth. In the photos you can see the bright yellow tacking too. This is for placement purposes and will be removed after embellishing the top. So, back to square one as far as embellishing is concerned.

I have now decided to try adding texture rather than colour, and to create a more informal panel as I didn't like the regularity of the weaving either. I like the idea of lots of flowers using the same thread that I used to make the top stitched randomly over the panel and extending over the shouler area. The beige flowers are experiments - I like the size of them so will now go ahead and make lots from the pink thread.