#fibercrafting
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bomberqueen17 · 8 months ago
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sewing and dyeing
I have managed to achieve some sewing!
I finished the silk dress from the yardage I'd dyed around Christmas, even hemmed it and everything, I feel very accomplished. So that's done.
And the linen bias-cut slip dress I made around Christmas, which I never wore anywhere because it was white-- I've managed to dye it, and it came out much more interesting than I'd expected! So, pictures and discussion behind the cut.
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[image description: A mirror shot of me, a fat blonde white woman, in a grungy basement, wearing a clingy white knit tank top with a drapey cowl neck]
Firstly, I made this tank top (I bound the armholes, it looks nicer that way)-- started with the Cashmerette Wexford top, then used this tutorial from Threads Magazine to hack a cowl neck onto it. Ages ago I'd had a cowl neck sleevless top that I loved, and wore holes in, and couldn't find one again. So I used a yard or so of very slinky knit, probably some kind of rayon blend from Dharma would be my guess.
I tried it on, and immediately threw it in the soda ash solution to dye it because I don't need a white top like this, it'll get shit dripped on the tit immediately so I might as well give it a busy dye job. I will make more of this top in other fabrics, but 1) make the cowl just a bit longer so it drapes farther, and 2) make the self facing deeper, I feel like this one is going to flip out all the damn time.
I also think I'll hem this shorter, but I haven't hemmed it at all so far so it remains to be seen.
Secondly, I have nearly finished this button-up camp-collar shirt from the Cashmerette Club, in a natural linen that I have so many yards of from an old project I never did.
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[image description: me in the same grubby cluttered mirror view of my basement, wearing a gray shirt, slightly wrinkly, with unfinished sleeve edges and I'm holding it shut because there aren't buttons on it yet. There are two breast pockets and one is significantly higher than the other.] So the breast pockets are optional and uh I am definitely only going to put one or zero on the next one of these I make because I checked and rechecked and rechecked and this is literally the best I could do at making them even??? ugh also they don't sit right because there's a bust dart and one of them went on ok and somehow the other one is overlapping the bust dart slightly, which means it's Not On Straight. Just.... not optimal. I get why there are pockets but I also super get why they're optional. No thanks!
I hate the interfacing too, it was awful to work with and feels like paper. But once I've finished and washed this I hope it will settle down. (In the past I've used shitty salvaged interfacing for things I was making, and used spray adhesive and sewed the edges where possible, and it worked fine. This, I splashed out and got the stuff in the package that's ostensibly meant to fuse on with your iron and guess what doesn't fucking work? that. So it's been just a nightmare and I'm not buying the nice stuff again because it fucking sucks. I get that you don't want to not interface the collar of a shirt like this, and the button band would be awful un-interfaced, but christ, I'm using the flimsy salvaged shit I cut out of an old bedskirt next time.
The directions on this pattern are... well as long as you know what they mean it's great. But there's a video sewalong, and that helped a ton. This is a very complicated pattern and yet somehow none of it has been beyond me, even though i sewed one bust dart inside-out first thing, and immediately also sewed the yoke to the back inside-out, and then right away also assembled the collar inside-out because I was so distracted by how much the interfacing did not actually fucking do what it was supposed to (yes i followed the package directions, no it did not fucking fuse). I got a lot of seam-ripping done, is all. (It really is a cool pattern, and if you manage to get through the directions, which are extremely specific, you wind up with a fully-finished interior with almost all the seam allowances beautifully enclosed-- it's cool as fuck.)
I have fabric already set aside to make at least two more of these. IDK how much I'll wear them but I love them. (I *have* coveted a shirt-dress for years, with one Almost Okay from Torrid that I wore a lot but have recently realized looks awful on me actually, so I will be making it a dress too, no fear.)
But then! Also: Dyeing!
So I looked on Dharma Trading for their tutorials and was not disappointed. I don't want to do traditional tie-dye, but I want the effect I got at Christmas with the silk scarves that I space-dyed. I don't have to steam-set fiber-reactive dyes, so that's a plus.
I saw this tutorial on dharma for ombre dyeing and I'm super gonna try that next, but haven't yet.
Tie Dye Tutorial on Dharma Trading: this is the one I used as a starting point.
So I dissolved a cup of soda ash in a gallon of warm water, put that in a plastic bucket, and soaked my fabric for 5-15 minutes, and then I decided to do a kind of gravity-based thing with squirt bottles and a spray bottle. I hung a clothes hanger from the gas pipe in the ceiling, put a big plastic mortar tub underneath, put a smock on myself, mixed up my dyes (and urea and in some cases salt, as directed by dharma the all-knowing-- half-cup batch size for the squirt bottles, and quarter-cup sizes for the spray bottle), and got to work one garment at a time.
I put some pleats into the garments and held them with clothes pins. Then I sort of "drew" along the pleats, picking a color to be the tops, and a second color to squirt into the valleys. I filled in with the spray bottle to highlight the pleats more, since that would hit the outer parts of the folds but the interior would be shadowed and stay white; then I could go draw in those white areas with my shadow color.
Everything then would drip down toward the hem of the garment, though there wasn't really that much movement; if I wanted a drip to cascade, i had to draw it down there myself with the squeeze bottle.
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[image description: two squeeze bottles with narrow nozzles, and a spray bottle of more rigid plastic with a pump-dispenser top, sitting on top of a piece of stained scrap fabric on an old washing machine with tubs of dye powder sitting in the background.]
I also did a shirt where I spread it out on a rack in a pan at an angle, and sprinkled a mixture of dye powder and salt on it. Then I went and used the squirt bottles too, but it was a fun technique and I'd use it again.
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[image description: a garment lies in loose folds, speckled with dark blue-green spots, and at the top decorated in splotches of blue and green.]
I wrapped the garments in plastic, and put the smaller ones into plastic bags, and then hung them outside in the sun so that a) the dye would flow downward rather than backstaining the areas I'd meant to leave white, and b) the sun would warm them so the dye could cure, and c) the plastic would keep them wet because the dye only chemically sets while damp.
Let them cure for 24h, and then today I brought them in and rinsed them for about a thousand years, and then washed them and gave them a soak and rinse in dye-fixative, then dried them on the line.
Here is the linen bias-cut slipdress I made at Christmas time, dry and ironed.
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[image description: a dress on a hanger, with my hand pulling out one side of the skirt: the straps and neckline are bright emerald green, and then the body is streaked vertially with varying shades of green, teal, and dark blue, with a little purple at the hemline. The colors are light and a little muted, and some white shows between them in a few places.]
The linen took the dye lightest, the cotton a little darker, and a small offcut of rayon I'd had sitting around took the dye darkest of all.
here's everything still damp on the line:
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[image description: under a blue sky, a metal clothes-tree-style line on the left has several small items in shades of green and turquoise, and then a line crosses the screen from right to left through the middle, with several items hanging on it. In the background are two cotton dresses, one mostly teal and the other green at the top with a white and purple skirt, then the linen dress from above in the middle, and closest to the camera is a mostly-quite sheet of fabric with geometric lines in green, blue, and purple.]
The foreground fabric is the rayon, and I sandwiched it between two blocks of wood with rubber bands holding it in place, and just saturated the edges with dyes. I'm extremely into it, it came out beautifully. i have more rayon so I am going to make something from that to ombre-dye, for sure.
I have severely overdone my physical activity the last two days though; I lay awake for a couple of hours the other night with my sciatic nerve just burning, and I expect the same tonight. We'll see though, maybe I'lll be pleasantly surprised, or just lucky.
Oh yah I'm trialing Ritalin, but just like the other medications, it's such a low dose and it's not extended-release. I looked up how to take it and the directions assumed I'd been given two or three pills to get through a day. Not so! So I have about four medicated hours in a day, and keep experimenting with where to put them. I don't notice it wearing off the way I did with Adderall though, so there's that at least.
Maybe by the end of May I can try a full dose of something, and see if that helps. IDK, it seems like it might.
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chthonicathenean · 8 months ago
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Daaaaaaaaaaaaaang wool purists are snooty! I'm watching a video on machine washable wool, and the video starts with a description of how wonderful wool is (water resistant but water absorbant, warm, etc etc), but unfortunately it tends to felt if you're not careful with it. After describing the superwash process (which involves a coating of polymer, I had no idea!), she says "So what do we gain by doing this? Well, the wool is now machine washable and softer." *stares blankly at the camera with cricket sounds*
Oh pardon me, fancy fiberwear lady who thinks unadulterated wool is incomprehensibly superior, some of us have been using acrylic yarn that we can get from the craft store for years and are only just starting to explore wool! The switch from completely plastic yarn to mostly natural and a little bit plastic yarn is so much less intimidating than going directly to something that you have to give so much care to. I've seen so many instances of people not buying something if it says hand wash/dry clean only because "Ain't nobody got time for that!" so the wool now "only" being machine washable is actually a huge deal for people. Plus most people don't spend hours in frigid, windy, wet environments, so all of the main reasons that wool was such a super-fiber back in the day when people were more exposed to the elements are really just not much of a concern anymore. ALSO there's the fact that a lot of people are sensitive to textures and knowing that they can make something that touches their skin without worrying that they have proper under-layers that extend past the edges is pretty great as well.
Don't get me wrong, I think the fact that superwash wool is partially plastic is pretty important information that should be more widely known, but yikes. I will also concede the point that any industrial process is likely rife with all sorts of environmental concerns (the creator said she was an environmental chemist so it's not just "ooh, scary chemicals bad!).
She mentions that she does not judge people for their choices and points out that individual choice and systemic issues are very different things. I still think the video overall comes across as a bit disdainful.
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saltpixiefibercraft · 2 years ago
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Oh my gosh I'm so behind on Tour de Fleece posts, but I feel like I have a decent excuse: what with having to move states in 2 weeks with a few days' notice, lol.
I'm getting a lil spinning in here and there, it is definitely a good way to destress between frantically packing boxes
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bethany-sensei · 2 years ago
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Challenging all writers to stop using “homespun” when they mean coarse or crude.
These photos are of the scarf/hood of mine that gets the most comments from random strangers. I spun* the yarn (angora/merino blend). I plied* the yarn. I knitted the yarn. It’s as fine as any yarn you could buy in any store.
Let’s please find better descriptive words for simple clothing.
*on a drop spindle
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hattedhedgehog · 9 months ago
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My Dragon Age Inquisition character card embroideries all together! Each is 11.5x19.5 cm. Dorian took 73 hours, Cassandra took 89 hours, and Sera took 75 hours.
I wonder which character I'll do next...
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[Image descriptions: Embroidered versions of the Dorian, Cassandra and Sera character selection card from Dragon Age Inquisition.
Dorian holds a book under his left arm while casting magic with his right. There are white glyphs in the air and a white snake running under his cloak and under his arm.
Cassandra sits atop a war horse with Inquisition soldiers behind her. She wears black armour with a gold-trimmed cloak, and the Seeker flag and he cloak stream behind her.
Sera stands atop a slanted tree trunk with her bow held suggestively between her legs, looking at the Skyhold tower in the distance, where the tiny figure of the inquisitor is present in the window. Mountains and turrets make up the background behind her.]
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bismutharts · 8 months ago
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i realised recently i never posted this guy finished. his name is Edward (effervescent) and i once edited him from discord emojis . he's been done for like a year
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egophiliac · 15 hours ago
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still rolling around on the ground over the contrast between Jack and Mal. it's so...🤌🤌🤌
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hibernationfibres · 6 months ago
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This silly idea turned out SO CUTE it's worth the fluff that now covers every inch of my bedroom floor :D
usual catalogue post to follow ^v^
Update: Pattern now live!
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rareartifice · 3 months ago
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Crochet Morningstar Flail Plushie & Crochet Greataxe Plushie
Patterns
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cozy-ghost-crafting · 5 months ago
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22ct Aida cloth, 2 strand DMC floss with 4 spaces treated as one!
Pattern found here!
I had so much fun making this little guy for a friends birthday. When we worked together we would intimadate each other red panda style just to make the day a little more fun.
The icing on the cake for me is the crochet border, Its just going to look so cute hanging on her wall!
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a-treatise-on-velociraptors · 10 months ago
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Not knitting nor crochet but a secret third thing
(Finally got the hang of nalbinding--here im working with some merino i spun up with a drop spindle)
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space-adora · 1 month ago
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‘Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee,’ and I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to!
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stupidbeecandle · 3 months ago
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Sock one, done! Sock two is already starting on the first row of indigo diamonds. Love. Love. Loving these.
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saltpixiefibercraft · 1 year ago
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I LIVE I SWEAR. Have this 90's soda cup inspired warp as a proof of life lol.
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bethany-sensei · 2 years ago
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I am cautiously hopeful that this will be my last batch of yarn spun while sitting around in hospitals this year. I’ll ply it tomorrow.
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grison-in-space · 9 months ago
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Man, there is a huge bias in the way that hobby fibercrafters approach and think about textiles—and I say that as a hobby fibercrafter myself! See, weaving has a high barrier to entry relative to knitting, crochet, spinning—even embroidery or sewing, these days, as the sewing machine automated much of the tedium of the craft. All of those crafts require a lot less in terms of startup costs to the hobby crafter than the machinery of a loom does.
But... look, if you want to understand mass produced textiles or textiles in any historical context, you have to understand weaving. If you want to understand how most of the cloth that people wear is made, you have to understand weaving, because weaving is the oldest art for mass producing cloth that can then be turned into garments.
Spinning is also very important, of course. Spinning is how you get the thread that you can turn into cloth any number of ways. Historically speaking, though, the most common way that thread or yarn becomes cloth is inarguably weaving. More to the point, weaving is also a historical center of industry and labor organizing. Ironically enough for the argument about how no one asked a woman, the industrialization of weaving is actually an interesting early case example of men organizing to push women out of a newly profitable position.
Besides that, knitting and crocheting in particular are incredibly modern crafts. Most modern knitting as we would understand the craft is shaped by the inventions of Elizabeth Zimmerman, and even things like the circular knitting needle date back only to the past century. Historically speaking, the great innovation of knitting as a tool for fiber craft is the ability to construct garments for small, odd shapes that can stretch and grip: stockings, gloves, underwear. Even that great innovation, the knit sweater, is an artifact of the 1850s—and the familiar cable knit sweaters of the Aran Isles are even newer than that. Crochet is even younger: the entire craft originated in the 1820s as far as anyone can document.
None of that is any shade on anyone. Like I said, I knit; that's the locus of my personal interest in textiles. I just think that textile history is neat, but if you're going to make big pronouncements about the historical development of textiles, it's important to think about what changed about the technology of textile production in the most common ways of turning raw fiber into cloth—and you cannot stop at the level of understanding how to make thread or yarn, because the properties of the cloth are always going to be an artifact of the construction of the cloth.
That's technology, baby! It's literally weavecraft. But it's not obvious that weaving is missing from the bounds of a person's experience with textile manipulation until and unless they're trying to understand and work with a wide range of fabric types—and when you can quite reasonably go from raw fiber to a finished garment using modern popular craft techniques that don't rely on anything that appears difficult for a medieval craftsman to make, it's easy to forget the role of weaving in the creation of cloth as a finished product.
I suppose the point I am making is: think deeply about what your own areas of expertise are not bringing to your understanding of history. It's easier to miss things you'd think.
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