Wednesday Night Fun...

Attended a training session at the Textile Center on Wednesday. Sort of gearing up for summer camp classes and what not, plus it was a great way to get together with the other teachers and play! We did wet felting. I have always been intrigued by it but the idea of being wet and soapy for any length of time was a great deterrent. My hands don't do well with that combo, I get all red and flaky and very uncomfortable. Enter olive oil soap from Bryn Mawr Soap, our fearless leader Becka knows these folks and loves their products. So the soap was chopped up and mixed with warm water to make a rather viscous mixture and we used this to aid in the wet felting. My hands were so happy and we all had a blast. First we made bead/geodes, an easy 1 hour project to do with kids and or grown ups.

Next we tried creating sheets of felted wool for inlay, this was great fun. Each person did one color and then we traded pieces to to great a final project.

here's my final piece. I am planning on adding some beads and who knows what else.

So then we got to talking about other methods of dyeing wool and Becka showed us how easy it is to dye roving in Kool Aid. I had read about this before but had no idea how freakin' easy it was. I love roving for needle work and then I started asking questions about using wool felt and the Kool Aid. Nobody had tried it and there was some doubt that it would work.

Being a member of the "What Happens When I do This" Club I decided to have a go at it. Stopped in at JoAnn's yesterday, they also have some great linen on sale. I bought 2 yards of a 100% wool, cream colored felt using the coupon.
My initial plan was to wash it in Synthrapol but I didn't want to wait. Having no Kool Aid in stock (yuck for drinking) I pulled out the food coloring. Dumped some in a measuring cup (green and yellow) added a bit of vinegar (Kool Aid had citric acid) and dropped in a bit of wool right of the yardage. I microwaved it for 2 minutes and let it rest for a bit and this is what I got...

A very forest-y color. So now I'm thinking cool, I don't need to wash the fabric and gosh I have all this dye left over. So i grabbed a bigger piece of felt and crumpled it up (I was hoping for a mottled effect or whatever) and stuffed it in the cup... Again I zapped it for a few minutes and let it rest and then I noticed the water was getting clearer so I pulled out my wool, gave it a quick rinse and check this out!

Now I want to go get the Kool Aid, mostly because the colors are premixed and turn out so vibrant, here's a chart so you can see what I mean.

Ok, the sun is shining, I'm going to go for a walk. have a great weekend!