Scouring Wool correctly without felting it. Step by step instructions for how to scour or wash raw wool and other animal fiber

Using a drop spindle is a fun way to get started in the wide, wide world of hand spinning wool. The drop spindle is inexpensive to buy and an easy DIY project. We just finished a weekend at the Heart of New Mexico Fiber Gathering where I was able to demonstrate spindle spinning and visit with many people who are trying to learn how to spin yarn. These tips are my best advice for a beginning spindler. Don't feel frustrated until you've tried them all! 1. Watch someone spin with a drop spindle.I

New to spinning yarn? There are various factors that will help to achieve a consistent handspun yarn, which we will discuss today.

Exploring various sheep breed fibres for spinning, including fine and medium wools, long and down, double-coated and primitive wools.

Excited to embark your spinning adventures, but not sure where to start? This post has everything you need to know when learning how to spin yarn.

“I don’t want to spin mud” - This is a very common phrase uttered amongst hand spinners and it refers to the frustrating phenomenon of buying the most beautiful, multi-coloured blend of fibres, and then spinning a yarn from it that, from a short distance, looks like a murky brown or dirty grey colour. I’ve done it myself. I bought three hundred grams of World of Wool’s Fairytale blend called “Over the Rainbow” and took it away on holiday to spin. Image copyright World of Wool It’s gorgeous, and if I’d spun it using a drafting or preparation method that would have kept those colours separated, I would have achieved a beautifully variegated yarn… Unfortunately, I blindly drafted it all and then spun it from the end using a short forward draw. My resulting yarn came out a slightly disappointing dirty green colour. I achieved this muddy result due to optical blending - when two or more small areas of colour are repeated, very close together, the eye doesn’t perceive them as separate colours, but instead blends them together. Plotting the colours from Over the Rainbow on a colour wheel If I’d actually stopped to think about it, basic colour theory would have told me that any blend that contains colours from all the way around the colour wheel will inevitably turn out to be just a little bit brown or grey, if it’s not spun with the intention of maintaining larger areas of each colour, so that the eye still sees each shade in its original hue, when it’s spun and plied into the final yarn. Helpfully, World of Wool lists the individual colours in the Over the Rainbow blend. When you see them separated out like this, it’s not surprising that my finely drafted singles ended up a dirty green colour. Without the red, I probably would have got a fresh green, but throw in its opposite colour and things begin to turn brown. Since my first and only experience of “spinning mud,” I’ve been very cautious to only buy blends made from analogous shades - colours that sit relatively close together on the colour wheel, so that if they were all mixed together you wouldn’t get grey or brown, but a heathered, richer shade of the sum of all the colours. I’ve been playing it safe. Well, my fibre preparation skills have improved quite a bit over the last few years, and so I’ve decided to play around a little and experiment with a few different methods of spinning a multi-coloured blended top. Since the unfortunate incident with the Over the Rainbow fibre blend, I’ve learned that the two most popular methods deployed to avoid spinning mud are to either spin from the fold, or to tear off strips so that you are spinning from a reduced number of colours. I’ve got a couple of other methods that I’d like to try, but basically, I’m just going to have fun playing around with coloured fibres to see what I come up with. I’ve had the idea for this post for some time now, and when I was taking a look at the secret “Mill Members” page of John Arbon Textiles I found the perfect fibre blend for this project. This is “Midsommar” by John Arbon. It seems to be made up of turquoise, black, orange, red, and a tiny dash of yellow and white. Just the fact that it contains quite a bit of both turquoise and orange tells me that there’s a good chance that my yarn will end up brown if I’m not careful. A quick way to get an idea of what kind of optical blend I would get is to blend the colours digitally beforehand… The central rectangle selection of the fibre image has been blurred in Procreate … and yes, it looks like there is a very good chance of ending up with a dull grey/brown. This could be challenging. Each single will later be chain-plied with relatively short chains to finish it, as this is the easiest way of increasing the chance of getting the different colours to pool with themselves. The control - lashing onto a hackle I’m going to begin by intentionally blending the fibres together by randomly throwing them onto my hackle and then dizzing off a thin roving. This will give me a yarn with quite a thorough blend of colours, and it will be useful to compare my later yarns with. If I were to draft out all of the blended top, and then spin from the end, I imagine that I would get a very similar colour effect. Here’s the hackle blended yarn. It’s quite an attractive, heathered brown shade, and I love how, when you look closely, you can see the turquoise and orange shades. However, there’s no denying that it’s a long way from the bold, contrasting blended top that I started with. Control yarn knitted sample #1 Spinning from the end, without pre-drafting With my first method, I drafted from the very tip of the blended top. Normally, I would predraft my fibres, but that would only thin out each colour, forcing me to spin from all of the colours at the same time. Working from undrafted top allowed me to spin for a while on the individual colours, before moving onto the next colour along. It took a little more concentration, but I think it was quite effective. I love the tweedy subtlety of this yarn - the orange and turquoise flecks are dotted around the mostly warm brown background. Control yarn and yarn spun from the end of undrafted top. #2 Spinning from the fold To spin from the fold, I pulled off a small section, that was just 10-15cm long. (I did try longer lengths, but the fibres tended to bunch up in my hand after a little while.) I then opened up the top and spread it across my index finger so that I could see as many of the different bands of colour as possible. I then spun from the centre of the fibres, effectively spinning the blended top from the side, so that the colours were mostly spun one after the other, rather than combined with each other. The resulting yarn appeared to be the most colourful, with the most barber poling, and the least colour mixing of all of the yarns. As I'd pulled off a shortish length of blended top, it also gave me the shortest individual lengths of colour variegation - which explains why there is so much more barber poling in this yarn than in any of the others. I can definitely see why this is a popular method for avoiding optical blending, as it was very little extra effort, once I’d worked out my preferred technique. Control yarn and yarn spun from the fold Personally, I think this spinning method would look better with a blended top that is made up of analogous shades as the colour changes were much more sudden in the knitted sample, than in any of the others. It is still a very pretty yarn though. Here's a video of me 'spinning from the fold' in a little more detail. #3 Splitting the top vertically into a reduced number of colours, and then breaking each section up to distribute it throughout the yarn The Midsommar top, was really quite well blended, which made splitting it vertically challenging. My goal was to split the blended top into sections that contained just one or two colours, but unfortunately, some of the colour sections were so thin that I was either spinning from sections that barely needed any drafting, or it just wasn’t possible to divide it into sections that wouldn’t turn brown. It was also a little more effort than the previous 2 spinning methods. It did give me quite long sections of colour though, compared to some of the other spinning methods. Control yarn and top split vertically yarn This yarn felt much more designed than the previous yarns. Although I spun the colours randomly, for speed, I could have arranged them into a gradient, or had longer or shorter colour changes if I had a specific project in mind. This method definitely has a lot of possibilities. This was one of my favourite yarns, so I made a video of how I made it. #4 Drafting onto a blending board and then spinning from 3 rolags. In this method, I drafted the fibre onto the blending board, trying to keep each coloured layer the same. I then pulled off 3 rolags from the blending board, drafting them off as I rolled. In retrospect, I think it was quite optimistic of me to hope that carefully putting down 4 layers of fibre on top of each other would ensure that all of the individual colours would stay together during spinning. As you can see, they mostly merged together, with the odd pop of colour here and there. Control yarn and 4 layers drafted onto a blending board yarn The resulting yarn was quite subtle, with the odd fleck of colour on a mostly brown background. #5 Drafting thickly onto a blending board and then spinning from 1 large rolag After realising that adding lots of thin layers resulted in a lot more blending of colours, I decided to try something slightly different. This time, I only slightly drafted the fibres onto the blending board in just a couple of layers. I then pulled all of the fibre off in one, large rolag. Whenever I've seen anyone using a blending board in the past, I've always wondered why they don't pull off just a single rolag, instead of splitting it into two or more. I'd never tried it myself, but as this was definitely a time to play and experiment, I decided to give it a try to see what difference it made. The resulting rolag looked like it had so much potential and promise, but sadly, it was probably the least fun to spin. The fibres, being wound thickly, took much more effort to draft. It was also impossible to stop the colours from blending as they all seemed to want to be drawn out of the centre of the rolag at once. If I were to class any of the yarns as a fail, this would be it. Control yarn and yarn spun from a single, fat rolag There is a hint of orange in the cast-on edge, and the odd pop of colour here and there, but it's overwhelmingly brown. It was an interesting learning experiment, but I won't be trying it again. #6 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in a single layer, and then drafting off four rolags Well, we learn so much more from our mistakes than our triumphs, and for my third attempt at using the blending board, I worked out a method that really worked for me. I'd already learned that the more layers I draft onto the blending board, the more likely they are to blend together during spinning, so this time I decided not to draft the fibres on at all. I simply opened up the blended top so that I could see as many of the individual colours as possible, broke it off and then carefully attached it to the blending board with my blending brush. Having already learned that one thick rolag was definitely not a good idea, I drafted off four separate, thin rolags. The thin rolags were a little more delicate, but the fibres drafted smoothly from them, the colours blending from one to another easily. This turned out to be one of my favourite yarns, not just in appearance, but by how easy it was to prepare and spin. It was a joy, and I ended up spinning more of this yarn than any of the others. Control yarn and yarn spun from a single, undrafted layer Aesthetically, it's quite similar to the yarn that was spun from the fold, but the colours are just a little bit more muted and the colour changes appear a little less sudden. #7 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in a single layer on the blending board, and then drafting off with a diz After my success with a single undrafted layer, I decided to see the difference dizzing the fibre off would make. The fibres were laid down on the blending board in the same way as method 6. Just in this animated gif, you can see that several colours are being pulled off at once, which is definitely going to result in a lot more optical blending. This was one of the more subtly coloured yarns that I spun. Control yarn and yarn dizzed off from a single layer There's a definite place for this understated yarn, and the pops of colour add interest to what is still quite a reserved yarn. #8 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in 3 layers on the blending board, and then drafting off with a diz The only difference between this and the previous yarn is that I laid the fibre on the blending board in 3 layers - attempting to colour match as I laid down the fibre. The fibre for this yarn was a little easier to diz off as it was laid more thickly on the blending board. Control yarn and yarn dizzed off from 3 layers It's still quite similar in appearance to the previous yarn, there are just slightly more areas of colour. #9 Tearing out each individual colour and arranging it in a gradient on the blending board, then drafting off 4 rolags This was by far the most time-consuming method of avoiding optical blending, but I think it's one of the most attractive. As the Midsommar blend was really quite well blended, I found myself pulling off very thin strands to arrange them on the blending board in such a way that they wouldn't all merge into brown. I did actually fill the blending board with a gradient twice - the second time took significantly less time than the first, so I imagine that this is a technique that would get quicker with practice. Having learned that thinner rolags are better for preventing colour blending, I pulled off four quite delicate, but very attractive rolags to spin from. Looking at the singles on the wheel, I love how the colours are very distinct and transition beautifully from one to the other. This resulting yarn looks like it might have been spun from a hand-painted top - but for a fraction of the price! Control yarn and yarn arranged in a gradient on a blending board Here, you can see that this yarn, unsurprisingly, has the longest of all the colour repeats. Like the yarn split vertically, this method has a lot of potential variations. This video shows me separating out the colours in a little more detail - ----- Gosh, I’ve learned so much, just allowing myself to play with fibre this past couple of weeks. I would highly recommend it! I’ve also fallen back in love with my blending board, now that I’ve learned different ways of using it to avoid spinning mud. As you can see, I've made four videos of the techniques that I think worked best, and you can find them, and other fibre-to-yarn videos on my YouTube channel here. If you've found this post useful, please pin it to Pinterest - it makes a big difference and really helps other spinners find it too. At this point, I normally suggest similar related blog posts, however, my list of spinning-related content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles. Thank you for reading, and happy spinning! Some of my Other Spinning Related Posts Spinning into Focus Linear Blending a Gradient Hackle Blending a Long Gradient Blending and Spinning a Rainbow Yarn 2 Ways Chain-Plying at the Wheel Versus Making a Chain-Plied Ball How to Measure Handspun Yarn Using an App Free Handspun Yarn Labels Spinning Dog Hair DIY Hackle DIY Mini Wool Combs 3D Printed Modular Lazy Kate Yarn Gauge Reference Tool for Hand Spinners Testing the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn Counter Prototype Spinning Supercoil Yarn Using Waste Fibres Unbiased Review of the Daedalus Sparrow Testing the LWS Autowinder for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 Spinning a Complex Fractal 3 Ply Yarn ---------- Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

Great Wheel A well known version of the spindle wheel, is the Great Wheel. The spindle wheel played an important role in the production of yarn and wool spinning for several years. The Great Wheel provided an efficient way to rotate a spindle by hand. The Spindle wheel was used to spin fine fibers, like cotton and silk, into fine thread. The common spinning (flyer) wheel styles are classified as; saxony wheel, castle wheel, Norwegian wheel or the modern wheel. Saxony Wheel When most people think of spinning wheel, the Saxony style is the most familiar. It is often referred to as the “Cinderella” wheel. The elements of a Saxony wheel are arranged horizontally, with a large wheel at one end and the flyer at the other, and normally has three legs. The Ashford Traditional and Elizabeth wheel are good examples of the Saxony wheel. Castle Wheel The component parts of a castle style wheel are stacked vertically with the flyer being positioned above the wheel. Good examples are the Ashford Traveller, and Majacraft wheel. Norwegian Wheel The Norwegian wheel looks similar to the Saxony wheel. It has a large wheel, four legs, and a horizontal bench. Kromski manufactures a Norwegian style wheel. Modern Wheel The modern wheels take advantage of technology for enhancing performance, increasing production, and has a more advant-garde appearance. Examples of modern wheels are Louet wheels and the Ashford Joy. The Charkha wheel The Charkha wheel gained popularity in India, by Mahatma Gandhi, because of its practical use for spinning cotton, and its portrayal of economic independence. It is still being used in parts of India today. The box style is one variation of the Charkha wheel. It is small, very compact, and folds up into a box that can be transported. The method used for spinning on a Charkha wheel is similar to spinning on the Great Wheel. The spinner rotates the wheel with one hand while drafting the fiber with the other hand. The Charkha wheel is ideal for spinning very fine fibers like cotton, silk, angora, and cashmere. If you have any questions or problems getting started, please contact us.

Explore Jennifer MacNeill's 8709 photos on Flickr!

Weave: Hand Hooked Item: Rug Brand: Dash & Albert Country: India Collection: Silas SKU: DA2219 Color: Gold Thickness: 0.5 Fiber: Wool Pile with Cotton Reverse

This listing is for roughly 3.5 ounce of hand dyed 100% wool roving/fleece to use for your rug hooking projects. Just tear apart this roving into 1/4 inch wide pieces of fluff and hook like you would normally use yarn or wool fabric strips (see last listing photos for demonstration). I use this rovi

In these blog posts, we will be discussing how to make a spinning wheel for yarn. Spinning wheels are one of the essential tools for,,,

Spinning fibers you can try. See our comprehensive list of 57 fibers you can try spinning on your spinning wheel or drop spindle.

Alternative Flooring design and manufacture carpets, rugs & runners made using British wool in collaboration with leading interior designers.

Not sure of what to do with raw wool? Here are some ways you can make the best of your recently sheared raw wool in your farm and homestead

In the Fall 2020 issue of Spin Off, passionate wool comber Kim McKenna makes a case for often omitted steps when combing, such as oiling, planking, and two passes through a diz.

There are many benefits of spinning yarn with a drop spindle. We will discuss how to use a drop spindle, so if you are brand new, this article is for you!

Creating your own curtains, clothing and other fabrics from your own livestock is another great skill set for the self-sufficient. Words: Nadene Hall 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SPINNING WOOL 1. IT'S EASY TO HAVE A GO If you’ve always been interested in spinning wool from your own sheep or fibre from your goats, alpaca or llama, or want to weave, knit or felt with it but have no idea where to start, contact your local Creative Fibre group. There are 15 areas throughout New Zealand and all have groups of expert spinners and fibre artists

Alternative Flooring design and manufacture carpets, rugs & runners made using British wool in collaboration with leading interior designers.

Solid color, smooth, soft merino roving is great for a huge variety of fiber art applications. In needle felting we like it to blend into pelts and top coats, and for use where you want to leave long fur or ends. It's also great to pull smaller for tiny detail areas. In wet felting, nothing beats the ease and vibrant colors of wet felting with merino. DHG extra fine merino wool tops are also great for spinning and weaving.Rust is a rich coppery brown.DHG extra fine merino (19 microns) wool tops comes from both Australia and South America and is carefully selected to ensure constant quality over time. All lots are MULESING FREE. The dyeing complies with Oeko-Tex Standard 100 and is done in DHG's dyeinghouse which is GOTS 5.0 and GRS certified.1 oz Bundle

Multicolor wool Mica vest . V-neck, Sleeveless, Regular fit, Fabric details: textured knit, Garment length: short, Made In (fabric and dyeing): Italy, (garment): Spain. Measurements in size S: 50 cm total length and 37 cm back width.

As authentic and true to heritage as a heritage Shetland sweater gets - this version is brushed in the tradition of "shaggy dog" sweaters adopted by Ivy League trads in the US. Jamieson's is a rare, one-of-a-kind operation: the family breeds the sheep, collects the wool, spins the yarn and knits the sweaters - all on t

So you bought a stunning fleece at the fiber festival, and you DON’T want to wait months for a mill to clean and process it? You really can do this yourself, and it’s not as daunting a…

James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1764. The machine changed the history of textile production and moved workers from home to factories.

Apart from actually shearing a sheep or wooly animal (hopefully I will get to do this someday), I have officially worked through the entire fleece to yarn process! Recently I was given a bag of raw…

Spinning Yarn: Yarn has been spun on spindles for thousands of years. With a little fiber and a spindle, you too can participate in this oldest of alchemies. This instructable will show you how to spin a single from wool roving, using a top-whorl spindle.

Snefnug (“snowflake”) from CaMaRose is a super soft, light, airy but plump yarn entirely made from natural materials in a luscious blend of 55% baby alpaca, 10% extra fine merino wool, and 35% cotton. Snefnug is manufactured at an Italian family owned spinning mill where the environment and animal welfare are taken into account, which of course means that the merino wool is mulesing free. Snefnug has a cotton mesh tube as the core with a luscious blend of merino and baby alpaca blown into it, making it a hard wearing but super soft and exclusive yarn. This yarn is perfect for baby and children’s knits as well as the trending oversized adult knits such as sweaters, cardigans, scarfs, and beanies made on big needles. Looking for project ideas for Snefnug? Read this blog post for some knitting inspiration! Sample pictured is the Basic Baby Sweater by Trine Bertelsen Needle Size: 4mm-6mm, US 6-10 Fibre Content: 55% Alpaca 35% Cotton 10% Merino Weight: 50 grams Length: 110 metres Tension: 12-16sts to 10cm. Your tension may vary. Care Instructions: Hand Wash

Cómo hilar lana. El arte de hilar está retornando en la sociedad actual. La gente está redescubriendo las cualidades únicas de la lana, la fibra preferida para hilar. La lana es resistente al agua y te mantiene abrigado aunque esté húmeda....

It's over a year since I first wrote a post about using an iron blanket. I remember doing more bundle dye experiments when all the leaves changed colour in 2017 and I did get closer to the iron blanket effects I hoped for. A couple of weeks ago, noticing some of the oak leaves were already falling, I managed to find the pieces of cloth I printed last year, but really couldn't bring to mind quite how I had done it. Unfortunately, last autumn I had little headspace to spare and wasn't blogging. To save me forgetting again, today I'm writing a reference blog about how I have now retraced my steps and moved a bit further forward. Taking the steps in order, first scour some natural fabric by washing it with soda ash to take off any oils, waxes or stiffeners. Next, mordant wool and silk with alum, cotton and linen with aluminium acetate. Then dye it by simmering the fabric in a plant dye bath. This picture shows linen, silk and wool pieces, all dyed with Dyers Chamomile flowers. Now the iron blanket. Home made iron acetate solution, made by leaving rusty metal in a mixture of water and vinegar for weeks or months, is inevitably of variable and unknown concentration. I'd say that in practice, the results of using the contents of my rust filled jam jar suggest my homemade solution is usually pretty weak. For the purpose of investigation, I made up a measured solution of ferrous sulphate, pouring 100ml boiling water on 10g of the powder and stirring, so that I would know 10ml contained 1g of iron. Using a syringe, I drew up 20ml and added it to a washing up bowl half full of water. By eye, that 2g of ferrous sulphate gave the bowl a very pale orange colour. My blanket fabric was a fairly thick cotton, cut from an old curtain. It was soaked in the bowl of iron solution for several hours and squeezed out just before using it. My dyed fabric had been dried without rinsing, straight from the dye bath. I put a piece of linen (half the leg of some loose trousers) to soak in plain water and collected a selection of leaves from the garden, plus oak and sycamore from the trees down the road. I unrolled some baking parchment on the table, smoothed out the wet dyed linen on its surface, laid out the leaves, some face down and some face up, then placed the iron blanket over the top. All the layers, baking parchment, dyed linen, leaves and iron blanket, were rolled up around a section of plastic drainpipe, then bound firmly with string. The completed bundle was stood on a trivet inside a very large pot with water in the bottom, the lid was put on and the pot was heated to the boil before turning the gas down low to keep steaming the bundle for two hours. I left it overnight to cool and next day, unrolled it. Below is a photo of the dyed linen and the iron blanket, laid out side by side. Not a ravishing success, but much can be learned from looking at it. As expected, the leaves varied in their affinity for iron, which I believe may be due to the amount of tannin each species contains. Most had made blacker shapes where the underside of the leaves faced the iron blanket than where the underside of the leaf had faced the dyed cloth. This effect showed up even more clearly once the iron blanket had dried out. What happened on the dyed linen is less obvious, though much more important. I decided that the central oak leaf in this photo had worked best as a resist by being laid with its underside facing the iron blanket, as the yellow is brighter than the adjacent oak leaves which had been laid with their undersides facing the linen. I had rather hoped that where the iron blanket had been in direct contact with the linen with no leaf in between, the iron would have modified the chamomile dye to a warm green. As you can see, the yellow actually went more of a dark khaki. Unexpectedly, the Japanese Maple and the ginkgo leaves seem to have sucked the yellow dye out of the linen. I had read people recommending both of these types of leaves in the past and been disappointed that I couldn't get any dye or iron dip print from my trees. I am delighted to discover that the damn things actually work by 'exhausting' other dyes :) The hardy geranium aka cranesbill leaves had left beautiful, if subtle prints, full of detailed edges and veins. I grow several varieties, because they make lovely prints in contact dye bundles when dipped in iron. In spring, some types will print with their own yellow dye. Sorry, I don't know the names of the different kinds, but this is what the plants look like at the moment. Anyway, since they will soon die back when the cold nights come, I thought I would include cranesbill leaves in the next test piece, this time a good silk scarf. I laid the leaves on densely, hoping for pale shapes from the exhaust effect of maple and ginkgo leaves, fine patterns from the cranesbill and bold yellow resist shapes from the oak. Unrolling the first turn of the bundle looked great. Unrolling more turns revealed much darker silk and far less clarity of leaf prints. Time for a cup of tea and a fag and a careful think. I decided that the baking parchment wasn't preventing iron from the blanket soaking through to the layers rolled underneath and there was just too much iron everywhere. First modification of the technique was to reduce the amount of iron. For my next silk scarf I used an iron blanket cut from a thin, worn out cotton bed sheet. It was soaked in the same washing up bowl of iron solution, but wrung out firmly after soaking. I had read before about people using layers of clingfilm in their bundles, but never fancied the idea. Clingfilm isn't biodegradable or reusable and anyway, I thought it might melt during the steaming and weld itself onto the bundle. Funny how buggering up an expensive piece of silk has changed my attitude, I felt quite ready to give cling film a go. After steaming, the bundle looked as though it had been shrinkwrapped. Happily, the clingfilm peeled off with no trouble. It had confined the iron from the blanket, allowing it to work only on the single layer of silk against which the blanket was pressed. With less iron available from the thin cotton blanket, the background colour looked much less gloomy, though you can see deeper lines where the string had squeezed the dyed silk most tightly. Taking away that shroud of darkness made it much easier to examine the actual leaf impressions. The ginkgo had had the most powerful exhaust effect though I could now see that the sycamore had also reduced the strength of the chamomile dye on the linen. With the clingfilm there to keep all the dye localised under the leaf, for the first time in my experience, the Japanese maple had left its own pink dye and the purple smoke bush had added a blueish green. Thick oak and fern leaves had acted purely as resists, keeping the iron blanket off the silk but neither exhausting nor adding anything to the dyed linen. I am truly delighted to have made a good iron blanket printed silk scarf. With less iron in it, even the effects on the iron blanket looked more interesting. Comparing the baking paper roll against the clingfilm, I shall have to weigh concerns about their relative biodegradabilty against my preference for sharp results. Anyone got a great idea for recycling steamed clingfilm?

Wool combs may look scary, but once you try them, you’ll be hooked.

Don't you just love it when your child's school give you exactly 2 days' notice to whip up a fancy dress costume! Yesterday we were told that my daughter's school were going to be having a "Harvest Themed" fancy dress day to raise money for the school. The obvious options were to go as a farmer, scarecrow or milkmaid - none of which we had at home and none of which I could persuade my daughter to go as. Apparently they're not "pretty enough." So here I am, trying to create a pretty Harvest costume out of thin air. I wanted to make an autumnal coloured skirt, which may or may not be decorated with leaves if I manage to find the time from somewhere... (as you can see, I didn't.) The Tutorial I decided to make a kind of layered, floaty tutu, but I wanted it to be slightly different from the kind that is just strips of fabric knotted around a piece of elastic. I wondered if it would be possible to make the strips twist and twirl like falling leaves as they cascaded. To make the skirt you need: - A metre or 2 each of as many different coloured nylon and polyester satin, organza and tulle fabrics you can find. (I live in a small town and so I was limited to just a few shades of habutai polyester, some lining fabric and some bright orange tulle fabric.) I already had a few remnants of other fabrics that I was able to put to use. 2 metres or so of 4cm wide ribbon. Elastic Pattern Pieces Candle lighter Scissors Thread Pins Sewing machine Print out the 3 pattern pieces, cut out the grey shapes and tape them together into one long semi-circular strip. Fold your different coloured fabric pieces up as many times as possible, allowing you to cut out 8 to 10 pieces at the same time. I found the safest way to ensure that all of the fabric was under the pattern piece was to fold it over and under like a concertina. If you have a lot more time than me, you could cut each piece out individually, which would make more economical use of your fabric, giving you a few more strips to work with. In the end I managed to cut 44 pattern pieces out of as many different fabrics I could find. To prevent the fabric edges from fraying and to give the fabric pieces more volume, singe around all the edges with a candle lighter - of course this method is only suitable for nylon and polyester. Never try this with cotton or silk and always do a test sample first over a bucket of water! The net or tulle fabric don't need to be singed as it doesn't fray. The skirt could be made completely out of tulle if you prefer, but you would need a lot more fabric and a lot more layers to get a similar effect. Once you've singed around all of the edges of your nylon and polyester fabric it's time to start assembling the layers. Before you start pinning, work out what your colour pattern is going to be. I had 5 different fabrics, all in varying quantities, so on a piece of paper, I made a note of the order I needed to arrange my fabrics so that I had an even spread of colour all around the skirt. Each piece is pinned to the previous piece at the straight edge. Overlap your pieces so that just a couple of centimetres is left exposed. Continue from left to right, staggering the overlaps until all of your fabric pieces have been used up. Alternate the direction of the curve in the pattern pieces as you work your way along the skirt. Here's a close up of the singed edges of fabric. You can see that the opacity of some of the fabrics means that you don't need nearly as much fabric, as you would with just tulle, to get quite a dense looking skirt. To make the skirt a lot more solid looking I added a circle underskirt to the whole thing. To draw the pattern for my circle skirt I used this ingenious page by the Scientific Seamstress. It's brilliant! It allows you to print out lots of pieces of paper that all tape together to form a quarter circle of concentric circles. I worked out how large the circumference of the inner circle needed to be by loosely measuring my daughter's hips and then adding a few centimetres. From that I worked out what diameter the waist hole needed to be*. This gave me the size of the cut out hole in the centre. Onto that I added double the length that I wanted the skirt to be and this gave me the diameter of the circle I needed to cut out. I hope that all made sense! *For reference, the formula for working out the diameter from the circumference is :- Diameter = Circumference divided by Pi Once all of your strip pieces have been pinned together, run a long basting stitch across all of the pieces and remove the pins. Now pin the fabric strips all the way around the edge of the inner circle. If your layered skirt is much larger than your inner skirt waist, use the basting stitches to gather it all in to the same size. By huge coincidence, my over-skirt was exactly the same size as the inner waist hole. To make the waist band, cut 2 strips of ribbon the same size at the waist, with an extra couple of centimetres for folding over. Stitch them together along one of the long edges to form the front and back of the waist band. With the wrong sides together, fold along the seam and press the seam along the right side. With the right sides together, pin the waist band into place, folding over the ends. Stitch the waist band into place. Fold the waistband over to its correct position and pin into place. Stitch the inside of the waistband into place by stitching as close as possible to the bottom edge of the front waistband. Finally, using a safety pin, thread some elastic all the way through the inside of the waistband, try it on and knot the elastic at the point where it fits comfortable but snuggly. There you have one swirly, cascading, floaty skirt, that any 6-year-old girl would love! If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy this:- World Book Day - Lulus spotty bow Up House pom pom mobile World Book Day - cuddly costume props ---------- Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram