duck bucket sewing

Updates! 1. I'm making slow progress on view A of V1510 . Slow because Harley the cat is still sick (his cancer is progressing, unfortunately), and this keeps happening: Me: Hey Harley, want to go work on the dress? Harley: I have a better idea. How about I curl up on your chest and go to sleep? This... ...or this? I like the dress so far, though. (I'm doing the tunic version, but it's long enough to be a dress on me.) And how did I not know that Sandra Betzina's instructions are fantastic? 2. I'm totally drooling over  Dries van Noten spring 2017 , especially this coat: I need this! Where can I find a giant floral print? 3. I dyed some fabric with purple basil. Did some cotton (including an overdye on a tansy/iron mix I wasn't crazy about), and then threw some wool and silk into the exhaust dyebath. I simmered each batch for several hours, then let it sit for 1 or 2 days. Result: two totally different colors. Plants, you are so weird....

The Seamworker's Guide to Amsterdam is up! I found out that Amsterdam — like  Antwerp  — is a really great source for knits. Especially sweatshirt fabric. (I'm really regretting not buying some as I get ready for fall sewing!) I loved Noordermarkt — it was like an open-air Mood, just stalls and stalls of every fabric you can imagine, lots of them organized by type: gingham, lace, etc. Albert Cuypstraat was like a New York street fair, with off-brand socks and makeup, food trucks, and — unlike most New York street fairs — fabric stalls (and permanent fabric shops behind them). Also, I stumbled onto a hippie restaurant with no set prices — at the end, the cashier told me to "pay what you feel or pay what you think." I laughed, but the food was very good. And they had cucumber-lemon-orange infused water. On the way back, I stumbled across an amazing shop called Sprmrkt . The entrance was filled with trees, s...

Update one: I'm still making dye swatches for the PEM workshop. Goldenrod with alum, l to r: cotton woven, cotton jersey, wool from Dharma Trading Co.,  wool from Weircrafts, and nubby silk Black-eyed Susan (I think) with alum, also in woven cotton, nubby silk, two types of wool, and cotton jersey I was surprised by the black-eyed Susans; you can't really tell from the photo (bad light, I guess), but they produced a fairly dark range of purple-greys. I totally expected them to make the usual yellows and oranges. I really like the results, especially the Alabama Chanin cotton jersey at bottom right. (All I want for Christmas, Santa, is a billion yards of white Alabama Chanin fabric.) Also, I used the goldenrod to dye the base fabric for an experimental pillowcase: Overnight soak on linen, no mordant. I made this for The Chalifour Collection at the Pickering Wharf antiques market in Salem, along with a few other pieces. (The back story on that: I was out...

Red wine experiments: wool, cotton jersey (I think), and silk with an alum mordant. I like them. Not sure how well they'd hold up after a wash, but I'm going to pretend that's not a problem. (And it was bad wine! We were going to throw it out anyway. Really.)

Experimental dyeing with tansy: They're not quite dry and still a little blotchy. I think I'm most excited about two in the middle, especially the lemon-yellow linen with an alum mordant and tin afterdip (third from left at the top), and the dark gray (looks black in the photo) cotton jersey with alum and an iron afterdip (fourth from the left at the top). Note to self: Iron darkens everything and tin brightens everything. Also, the cotton jersey took the dye surprisingly well. I've always heard that cotton doesn't take natural dyes well at all, and my first dyeing experiments with your standard white Gildan t-shirts didn't really work...but this is Alabama Chanin jersey, so maybe the fact that it's organic had something to do with it. (It is awfully soft.) I actually love the dark gray so much that I'm dyeing up an AC remnant with the tansy/iron mix right now. I hope there's enough to make a t-shirt. Also, I'm messing arou...

So my article on dyeing with plants is in the latest issue of Seamwork , and I thought I'd post some pictures and stuff from my own projects (because I think Colette Patterns is using their own artwork). Here's what coreopsis tinctoria (aka dyer's coreopsis) looks like in the garden. I plant this every year from  Old Sturbridge Village  seeds; they package their own, and they grow fan-freaking-tastically in our backyard. OSV also has a dye garden, if you're ever in Massachusetts and want to see some plants up close and personal-like. They also have a couple of great textile exhibits and do a Textile Days weekend every year. I love these guys. They're so cheery. And I always wind up with a ton of them, so I don't mind harvesting a bunch for the dyepot. ;) I used a camp stove with a propane tank in the backyard for awhile, which was pretty fun. Fabric dyeing in progress, using wool from Weircrafts.com , a dollmaking supplies site. (As I mentione...