Last year I was nearly exhausted by the time Christmas arrived because I was making so many gifts right up until the Big Day! This year I am experimenting with a few things I can make long before the silly season starts so the week before Christmas is still fun.
I’ve been collecting and drying lavender and planned to make some lavender bags. I am experimenting with natural dyes, using 100% cotton ticking as the base fabric.
The first dye I tried was boiled avocado seeds and skins to make pink tones.
After the dye had cooled I soaked the cotton ticking in it for an hour then hung it out to dry. It is a pretty dusty pink colour.
Next I boiled rosemary twigs to make a yellow dye.
This dye is quite pale and not what I expected
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This dye is made from onion skins and is a great orange colour. I used the skins from two brown onions and boiled then for fifteen minutes. This is a strong colour. The next day I boiled red onion skins to see if they resulted in a different colour. No, just the same!
I haven’t used fixers or mordants with any of these pieces I’ve dyed. They are only intended to be decorative.
From left to right, the basic cotton ticking, then the avocado dye (pink), the onion skin dye (orange) and the one on the right is the rosemary dye (pale yellow)
I cut a template of a heart shape then used this to cut shapes from all three pieces of dyed fabric.
Machine stitched around the heart shapes leaving a small gap to poke in the wadding and shake in the dried lavender. Clipped the edges. Turned it to the right side, using a scissor blade to poke the heart point out and ironed the heart shape. Clipped the pointy end off the heart so it sat better when turned right side out.
Stuffed the point of the heart and the top with wadding, then poured in dried lavender. I made a little funnel out of scrap paper to direct the lavender in to the middle of the heart. Later I discovered a kitchen funnel worked well, too. I sat the heart in a cup to pour in the dried lavender.
Cut the ribbon and then stitched a button where they crossed. When my parents left the farm my Mother gave me her many jars of buttons. When clothing was finally exhausted, she’d cut off all the buttons and keep them. She kept buckles and other sewing notions, too. I played with the buttons as a child and now I’ve re-used some of them on these lavender sachets.
Sweet smelling, pretty gifts ready for storing until needed.
INVENTORS MONTH
Consider the printing press, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, the internet, electricity, sliced bread, safety pins and contact lenses: they were all invented by great thinkers and tinkerers and we benefit from them everyday.
August is INVENTORS MONTH. Time to consider and feel gratitude for the amazing range of inventions making our lives easier every day. So, pop the CORK from a BOTTLE of CHAMPAGNE, sit out in the sun on your CHAIR and take a few PHOTOS on your PHONE to celebrate.