Brisbane Ranges National Park

Need a not very far away from Melbourne day trip in the bush?
Brisbane Ranges National Park.

Wildflowers are out now; some sort of prickly grevillea, happy wanderer, little pea flowers, and the heath is so, so pretty. Didn't get a picture of the heath though.

Laugh, Cry or Applaud? Quotes from the eight year old.

"It isn't TV that kills kid's imaginations dead, it's school."

"How many years do you have to go to university to be a Mum?"

Busy

Just in case you are wondering where I've been.

Show and Tell

Little vest for littlest Monkey, made using my homespun, dyed with food colouring. It's my second version, I've written down what I did, but I still think it needs some changes if I were to make it again. It's made in the round from the bottom up, there is no seaming at the end. If anyone is interested I'll try and put up the pattern, it's a size four, and the gauge is bulky.

Meanwhile my obsession with eco dying continues:

Iron Bark

Eucalyptus Cinerea

Before and After

Unwrapping the bundles is the fun bit.

Lemon leaves, vine leaves, mirror bush?, bougainvillea?, red berries.















Flowering gum, two different natives from the nature strip.












Seed pods from the nature strip.














Fallen eucalyptus leaves, she-oak?, lilly pilly?














Grevillea, correa flowers and leaves, native bluebell, native mint, two different gum leaves.



Close up of the lemon leaves, one of my favourite results.










The colours are a little less washed out looking in the flesh. Click on the photos for a closer view. I need to brush up on my botanical knowledge! Any hints or tips on formatting photos?

Eco Adventure

No, I'm not talking about riding in a jet plane, paying out heaps of dosh for the privilege and going trekking in some wilderness far, far, away, but something much more exciting.

I was trying to make that sound ridiculous, expensive, wasteful and uncomfortable; I've completely failed and instead think I've almost convinced myself that a wilderness trek far, far away could be just the thing....

I digress, what I'm actually talking about is eco-dying. I have dabbled in dying a bit before now, with commercial synthetic dyes, food colouring and natural plant materials (no link here, it was WAY before my blogging days), but my interest has been reinvigorated by a book, Eco Colour written by India Flint.

I also have a book on natural dying, which has less pretty pictures but is a hundred times easier to read, and much thinner, I can't find any links to it. My quarrel with this book, is the use of (mostly) toxic mordants which I am unwilling to keep about my house, so the methods India Flint use are much more appealing. I greatly admire India's work, and love the pretty pictures in her book, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as an enjoyable read, it certainly contains lots of information, but you have to work really hard to decipher it.

So, between India Flint's book, the book I own, and my own knowledge I've started experimenting with fervour. I have found this dying bizzo is much easier to do in short 15 minute bursts of time then the sewing caper, which I'm finding practically impossible to keep up with.

My apologies to any readers who aren't interested in this kind of thing, but I'm planning to use this blog as my journal for my eco-dying experimentation. Not solely, it's just convenient for me.

So here are my first attempts, based on India Flint's bundling method, on bamboo and calico, no mordants were used, I was hoping something used in the finishing of the fabrics would act as mordant, these pieces were new and unwashed. The basic method here is to place your plant material on your fabric, tightly roll it up and secure it, (I used cotton twine) steam for 30 minutes and leave it to go cold before unwrapping. This method has two purposes, it can give a beautiful eco-print, (a term which I believe was coined by India Flint) and an indication of the dye potential of the plant material used.

This piece is a bamboo/lycra blend, the leaves used were vine leaves that had just turned red, the colour is a beautiful pink, definitely planning more experiments with the vine leaves.
This one is a bunch of eucalyptus leaves and gum nuts on 100% bamboo fabric, complete failure in terms of colour, but look at the beautiful embossing!
Lesson: try pre mordant next time.



This is the same eucalyptus I used on the bamboo, this time on silk, the silk yarn was the only silk I had at the time, and I was feeling impatient. As you can see the eucalyptus has given a light golden brown to the silk, and you can even see a faint eco-print of the leaves, which will of course be lost when I use the yarn.

Above and below are the smashing method, on calico. I am very pleased with these first results. I used geranium petals and the vine leaves in various states of colour change. The petals and leaves were sandwiched between the fabric and banged with a hammer. That simple. I'm pretty sure this method won't take to heavy laundering, but as India Flint points out in her book, you can always do it again, once it has faded.

How cute is this flower press? (op shop find, for the kids, but kind of really for me)
The flowers, we found already pressed inside, note the blue flower, which I -think- is love in the mist? anyone? It has retained it's colour beautifully. I'm planning to try some smashing with blue flowers.


My conclusions from these early results, and there were others (salt turned those eucalyptus leaves to a dark steely grey) was that I needed to get my hands on some silk and wool. (Which take dye much more easily.) I mustn't be the only one scouring the op-shops for white silk and wool, because it is very, very difficult to find, and when you do the article is often too beautiful to cut up. Eventually I found a suitably hideous silk skirt and old pair of woollen long Johns*....


Here are my silk/wool samples bundled up with all sorts of stuff, in the steamer. I had to wait all night to open up these bundles, the suspense was killing me, and since this post is already way too long, I'll show you the results another day, can you bear it?




*Sometimes when using recycled, or used materials, invisible stains become visible with dying so the first thing I did with these was cut out the crotch, because despite the appeal of India Flint's less conventional methods, there are some stains I am JUST NOT willing to embroider around.

Never Been Particularly Tidy OR My Creative Space

This is my wardrobe. (My creative space is in my bedroom, so it's relevant.) I'm in the middle of doing a clean out. Normally the wire drawers are in place. The bottom one is out of action.....mice. I don't want to talk about it. Most of the sewing stuff on the floor was kindly moved there last night by my husband, admittedly the couch wasn't the best place for it, but he won't let me put anything on the sideboard thingy in the lounge room, which used to be a great up off the floor dumping ground.

Just the back rack in the first picture is mine. I never use it, there's too much crap in front of it, it's a pain in the bum to put anything there or get anything from there, so it's full of clothes I rarely wear. In fact the whole kit and kaboodle is full of clothes I rarely wear. Half of it is so old it's not worth hanging on to and yet, I just can't let go, some is op-shop stuff I never tried on, and have never worn, or needs to be adjusted. The results of my big clean out are a pile of clothes that mostly I want to put in my fabric stash, for cutting up and recycling, not very successful. As you can see, fabric storage space is needed (wanted?) lots more.
I am loathe to pack any of it away, as I like to know what I have, so I don't go buying stuff I don't need.



So this is my creative space at the moment. It's hopeless, and getting me down. It seems my little tool kit has been used by my husband and not put away, I didn't leave it there, I keep it away from him so that I always know where it is, I am the sort of person that can live in a pigsty but know where everything is, he is the sort of person that tidies up by throwing things out and hiding things, and never knows where anything is. Neither of us are tidy, but he likes to imagine he is. Marital issues aside, the up shot is, we, or more accurately he has decided to put the three kids in one room, so I can have all my crap out of his sight. Which is probably good, because I am getting nowhere the way things are.

Apologies for my bad phone camera photos, and my extremely poor writing efforts, it's a reflection of my state of mind.

Also, the kids need to get used to sharing, because a year from now they will be anyway. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but we have just bought another house, closer to school, yay! I just can't get excited about the whole thing until it happens, but eventually we will have more space. I didn't want this to sound whingy (except the husband part, freely admit to that whinge, and it is just a whinge, not serious.) just, it's the way it is.

For a look see at some beautiful work check out this creative space. And if you follow this link, you can find many more.