Stitches Studio

Upcycled

helen — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:08:24 +0000

Well this is what I did with one of my favourite sweaters that had worn out (big holes in a few places that would not look great mended). I pretty much chopped off the entire ‘body’ section and turned it upside down, making a knitted tube…

Then I folded what had been the bottom ribbing of my sweater over, stitched it down to make a channel and threaded waist elastic into it. That was the waist of the skirt finished.

Then I got my all-time favourite cashmere blend knitted yoga pants, which I had literally worn to shreds, and cut a couple of nice big strips from each leg. I folded the strips double, and machine stitched the ‘fold’ edge onto my sweater skirt, covering the ‘raw’ edge of the brown sweater fabric, that I had made when I hacked the neck and arm section of the garment off.

Job done! And two of my favourite garments live on in a new incarnation for a little longer.

50 shades of lace

helen — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:26:11 +0000

I had a very pale, dove grey in mind for a particular lace project…but even though they have an incredible selection at my LYS I resisted temptation and came home with some undyed (white) Fyberspates scrumptious lace yarn.

Mordanted with alum and cream of tartar and given really a very brief (15 minute) dip in a cool iron and logwood solution and I got this lovely pale silvery lilac.

I remember getting a similar colour during one of my earliest dye experiments (red cabbage juice, no surprise really!) and feeling disappointed that the colour was not deeper, brighter, more saturated. A couple of years on and with far nicer yarn and a better idea of what works, I’m deliberately aiming for a very subtle, neutral grey…

(No I haven’t read the book, but it does have a good title.)

Steampunk

helen — Sun, 12 May 2013 10:42:16 +0000

Why do some pieces of clothing have a certain vibe? Is it the texture, the colour, the cut…? It’s hard to put my finger on it. For some reason, my shawl for April (Of the Moon by Caitlin Ffrench) can’t help being steampunk.

The first shawl I’ve made from yarn I dyed and spun myself. Pretty pleased with it – the stitches are pretty even, the colour is interesting and shimmery, and it’s very soft and drapey.

And now back to finishing those socks…

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Halfway there…

helen — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:35:57 +0000

One sock…

One gauntlet…

One Smitten…

I seem to have a case of second sock syndrome when it comes to starting pairs of things and only making the first one…although I have actually done about a third of the second sock…

My first adventure in knitting with a Crazy Zauberball, which means the finished socks won’t be a matching pair (deliberately unmatching) anyway.

Oh well!

Sea mist

helen — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:12:38 +0000

I’m lucky to live in a beautiful part of the world. This last weekend was a long weekend in the UK, and we drove over to Weymouth to take the children to the Sea Life Adventure Park. As is often the case, we had blue skies to our left, but sea mist was creeping in from the shore to our right.

Cresting the hill overlooking Abbotsbury and the Fleet I caught these lovely views of St Catherine’s chapel.

And the surrounding scenery was pretty good too…

After that, it was all about fish…

and anemonies..

and shrimps…

…and a few other beasts that were moving too fast for me to catch them properly in low light…

After four years away, it’s nice to enjoy a holiday close to home in West Dorset.

Photoshoot!

helen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:26:51 +0000

I had so much fun on this photoshoot! It’s harder than you’d think to get really good quality photos, so I got some help from my brother James, who is a far more technical photographer than I am, and his lovely wife Emi who does a great job of modeling. (She is also a very talented musician and vocalist) This is one of my favourite shots for my White Swan Beret pattern.

I love this one too!

These new photos spurred me on to give the pattern a makeover:

We roamed around Bristol looking for the coolest graffiti and old bricks to use as backgrounds, trying to catch the best of the spring sunlight…there are more photos in the works and a new pattern for the summer on its way!

And then we went for a South Indian curry and some beer. The perfect day out. I’m blessed with a fantastic family who are multi-talented and great company!

Me and my Viking Shawl…

Snowdrop mittens

helen — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:52 +0000

Look at these gorgeous mittens! Well admittedly I’ve not actually made them yet, but the kit is on its way from Leena from Finland who has a lovely blog (in Finnish and English) about her dyeing adventures, Riihivilla.

“The flowers are white, naturally, and leaves are blueish green dyed with Japanese indigo and buckthorn bark,” says Leena. “The snowdrops in the cuff are double form of common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, and the bigger snowdrops are some of the taller hybrids.”

I’m really in love with all of her designs, it was quite hard to choose between them to be honest…

You can find Leena at the Kauppatori market on Saturdays in Helsinki. I love the markets in Helsinki – they were the first place I ever saw knitted dog hair! If that’s too far to travel she also has a shop online.

I’ve been using Ravelry to find out more about what other people who enjoy using natural dyes are up to. I’m gradually adding to my library of books, and putting links on this blog to interesting sites.

Spring has definitely sprung here in the UK (warmer, rain, mornings out cycling to the beach with my husband…) and our snowdrops have been and gone. It’s the first spring I’ve spent in the UK for four years, so I’m looking forward to sourcing some local plants for dyeing (nettles for instance – they really didn’t grow where I was in Canada) and even planting some woad seeds.

Woad Isatis tinctoria

mitten images used with permission

Lucky dyeing adventures – logwood and iron

helen — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:24:07 +0000

Yes this is a horseshoe, an old rusty horseshoe that was lying about in my back yard. I don’t know where it came from (I rented my home to others while I lived in Canada for a few years), but since iron can be used as a modifier for many natural dyes, into the pot it went.

I’m using logwood extract from Maiwa, which travelled back from Vancouver with me. I used a LOT (like a kilo) or merino and silk/merino wool roving and after bundling it around found iron objects, set out to make a deliberately uneven dye bath.

I threw in a few sprinkles of yellow turmeric along with the deep purple logwood extract. The idea of adding iron was to bring out grey shades and add colourfastness.

I added cold water and slowly warmed the whole lot up on the stove. I sloshed it around a bit but the wool was unevenly soaked and some had far greater access to the ironmongery I’d slung in. I left the whole lot to cool after about 30 minutes of gentle simmering. Here are the next few stages as it dried…

This is the merino – I’ve started spinning it and I’m getting lovely colour transitions through soft grey, charcoal, silver and plum shades. Where the iron was in contact with the fibre I have the deepest charcoal. The turmeric really adhered to the silk giving flashes of gold, so that’s going to be lovely (still drying!)

I learned from India Flint’s books that logwood dye is actually a bit of an eco-nightmare. Her approach is only to use dyestuffs you can source locally, and I have plenty here. This is something I will research further, but once this logwood is used up I don’t know if I’ll repeat it…sadly.