Snow Dyeing the Caves of Lascaux

It's freezing down here in North Carolina.  The natives are bearing it with their usual fortitude, as exhibited by frenzied attacks on the grocery stores for bread, milk, and toilet paper.  The transplanted Yankees are being snooty about how THEY know how to drive in the snow.  Same old, same old.  I'm from Ohio, myself, which makes me a Yankee in the South because the Southern definition of a Yankee is "not from the South".

Oh, and I DO know how to drive in the snow.  Just saying.

But rather than driving in the stuff, much better to be dyeing with the stuff.  DD came down from the mountains for a visit right before the snow hit.  We had a great time, hanging out, thrift store shopping (before the snow) and then playing in the studio with snow and dye and fabric.

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This is not a tutorial.  No way am I going to take responsibility for the mess you will make!  Or if it goes horribly wrong!  See Dharma Trading Company's instructions for ice dyeing.  We used snow instead.

We piled pre-treated fabric on to rack in a plastic bin and piled snow up on it.

 then sprinkled dye powder on top.



















and then more dye powder

This bin had blues and greens and a sprinkling of yellow.

The other bin had rose and henna and a sprinkling of yellow.













As it started to melt the snow shifted and left bare spots.  I didn't bother to fix it because by then it was obvious that I had piled the fabric way too thickly and the dye was not going to seep down through all of it.  There were enormous white patches visible underneath.

After the snow melted there was a large pool of coppery brown dye in the bottom of the bin.  I just threw all of this lot down in there and let it sit for a couple of hours as we did other things to the blue/green batch.



We followed the directions for getting the dye out.  My washing machine has a stainless steel tub, so I did all of that in the washing machine.  Stainless steel is not going to hold dye.  I do follow up all the dyeing with a load of something I don't really care about, like dog towels.

L to R:  white cotton curtain lining, white silk curtain material, ecru slubbed silk curtain material, Dharma silk

I would tell you who my original online dye teacher was, except that I did a lot of things that she does NOT recommend.  I agree with her that the best results come from using the right fabrics.  But I like to experiment.

BTW, she recommends a good quality unbleached muslin for cotton.  And I bought a whole bolt of it from her, which I have used with great results and am saving for when I am not experimenting.

Not Recommended Fabric #1:  white cotton curtain lining.

Dye is all about the chemical bonding between dye and fabric, and you don't want anything getting in the way.  Like the finish on most fabrics, including this one.  Or the residual effects of the bleaching necessary to make white-white.

But hey, it was $1/yard at the thrift shop.  And I got a LOT of it.  Probably a whole roll, but cut into 5 yard lengths.

And it worked well.  Best way I can described the difference between this and the 2010 snow dye experiments on the good unbleached muslin is that the colors are softer here and the patterns are fuzzier.  But it was also a slightly different dyeing technique.






Not Recommended Fabric #2:  white silk curtain material

I wanted some silk with a nice hand for scarves.  Silk is expensive.  I got this and the next piece for half price at a home dec fabric outlet.  See above about finishes and bleaching.

This is also pretty, but even softer and more faded looking than the curtain lining cotton.  But I like it.













Not Recommended Curtain Material #3:  ecru slubbed silk curtain material

This has an even heavier hand.  The results were, hmmm, interesting.  This one will probably get doctored further in the future with stamping or painting













So what IS a recommended fabric?  Well, anything sold by a dye purveyor as something intended to be dyed is probably a good bet.  I need to do more research on silks, but the freebie that Dharma threw in with my last dye order did take the dye beautifully.

It's a much lighter weight than what I want, but Dharma has LOTS of choices of silk yardage, as well as all kinds of dyeable wearables.  And I really, really wish they were paying me to say this.  Because I am drooling over the 50 different choices of silks they have.

Before we started DD popped out to the store to look for something dyeable.

The nightgown was cotton but the trim and embroidery were polyester and did not take the dye AT ALL.  A very pretty effect.




I took the leftover snow melt/dye mixture and used it to dye more white curtain lining.  Not going to tell you exactly how I did it.  The results were unmemorable, although it would make a decent sky fabric.  The dots of red could be cardinals flying through that sky.

The badly dyed rose/henna/yellow which soaked in the melted snow/dye mix came out a coppery color which I can't get to show up properly on the screen.  DD first said that it looked like oil stains on a mechanics rag, and I agreed.  But we also think it could serve as a surface on which to paint images from the Caves of Lascaux.




I was in Houston recently for a family event and the next-best thing to seeing all the Western cousins was seeing the The Cave Paintings of Lascaux exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

and oh, yes, there are some horses and bulls that will be painted here.  By me.  Probably badly.  But nothing much worse could happen to this fabric.


There was still snow on the ground the next day, and I was pleased enough with the results on the curtain silk to want to try making some larger scarves.

This time I was careful to keep each layer of fabric thinner, and I made two layers.

The color mix was purple and blues with sprinkles of fuschia.

L to R:  white curtain silk, another white curtain silk, ecru slubbed silk, white cotton curtain lining

The white curtain silks are very pale and pastel-y.
I am going to have to look at them by themselves and maybe I will like them better.

Some people actually do like pastels.













Or maybe I will overdye, stamp, or paint on them.
There are no failures, only ingredients for future projects.









The slubbed silk took the colors in this color family beautifully, and I managed to get better color saturation overall.

This shows only a portion of a long scarf, and on each of these scarves the colors and patterns vary quite a bit from end to end.  Is this a good thing?  Or not?  I'm not entirely sure.  But I like them.











The white cotton curtain lining also took the dye well and I really like it.








When I took the online courses, the largest pieces we dyed were half-yards.  I've been wondering about dyeing yardage.  So I got out one of those 5 yard pieces of white cotton curtain lining and used the snow/dye melt from the blue and purple mix, using techniques I learned in the online courses.  I added more blue dye because 5 yards is a lot of fabric.

I put some dye in the bottom of  a plastic laundry detergent container, then started cramming the yardage into it.  Added dye .  More cramming.  More dye.

The result was a lovely light purple.

The cool thing about scrunching fabric into a container with dye is the patterns that result.

The pattern and slight color variations are of a larger scale than I got with fat quarters and half yards scrunched into yogurt containers.  And although I like it, I'm not sure how I will use it.  Fortunately knowing how one will use something is not a necessity when it comes to fabric stash.


All of this made as big of a mess as you would expect.  In the summer time I move much of the dye process out onto the back patio.  But this is winter.  I did spill dye onto my cheap rug and I don't care.  Most of it blotted up.

A mishap with a bucket of washing soda solution left a white residue all over everything.  It wiped right up.  I don't give a hoot about my cheap rugs, but if I messed up my cutting mats I WOULD be upset.

I have been craving a session with the dye pots for a long time now, but wanted someone to enjoy it with me.  Yay!  Got my wish.  Thanks, DD.

Christmas CraigsList: Ho Ho Sew

It's that time of the year again:  my annual CraigsList Christmas sale of vintage sewing machines.  If you want to see the ads, visit Raleigh CraigsList and type dragonpoodle into the search box.  Or just click this link.  This, however, is the only place to see the entire Christmas collection, including ones that have already been sold and ones that have not yet been listed.

I assume if you are reading this blog you like to look at pictures of vintage sewing machines.  Long time readers will have seen many of these before. 

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Fuschia pink Morse, Japanese straight-stitcher

This is the best color I have ever seen on a sewing machine.  Too bad it is so faded on the back.

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Adler Belvedere

Coolest looking vintage machine.  Ever.  Too bad it has a plastic gear.  This one is not broken---yet.  All fully disclosed in the ad.

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American Home, Japanese zigzagger by Sanshin

SOLD.  Another really cool solid tank of a machine.  Sold to a nice young woman who bought it for her husband, who wants to learn to sew and repair backpacks and such. You gotta love a woman who buys her husband a sewing machine for Christmas.

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Another Japanese zigzagger.  Badge quite obviously missing.

SOLD to a man who wants to experiment with making sail boat covers.  We had a discussion about domestic versus industrial for his task, and I advised him to keep an eye open on CraigsList for a Sailrite machine.  But he decided to get this one first, and perhaps make more of an investment in an industrial after he sees how the job works out.  He's a former sail maker so I was confident that he knows what he is doing.

I took the photos and wrote the CraigsList ads as I finished rehabbing each machine.   That was a big improvement over last year when I left all of that to the last minute.  I am slowly learning how to take better pictures than the one above.

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Pink Atlas, made by Brother.  Japanese straight stitcher

 SOLD to Barbara, who bought a Singer 301 black longbed from me last year.  The woman knows her sewing machines.  Another gorgeous machine, although showing its age a bit more than the photos reveal.  The clear coat is crazed and there are some chips.




This one is the full package, however.  Original case, accessories, and manuals.

It's all PINK, too. The accessories box, the case, and even the covers of the manuals.















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The hard-to-find BelAir Bantam, knockoff of the Singer 99 but in ALUMINUM.  Weighs 22 pounds in the case.  

This appears to be the complete original package, with manual and original dated warranty.  Originally guaranteed for TWENTY YEARS (expired in 1971). 

The case shows wear but the machine is gorgeous.  And if you go looking at my CL ad you will see that I have priced this at the "make me happy" price point.  Some of them I am just trying to clear out and I know I will have the opportunity to acquire more.  This one I am not expecting to find again, not really sure I want to sell it.  But if somebody wants to make me happy, well then.....it could be theirs.

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SOLD to a fellow onion.  Onion is short for "treadleonian", a fellow treadle and people powered machine fan.  LOTS of people drooled over this one, and if I were willing to ship I could have sold it several times over.  It's really cute and I will miss having it around here!

Here's another rare beauty, the Kenmore model 11.  I added the hand crank but the original motor also comes with the machine.  This one is also "collectible" but it is missing a decorative button thingy that covers the access point just above the tensioner.  So I did not price it as "collectible".

The machine is from the 1970s, but the long bobbin shuttle system was obsolete by about 1920.  Go figure.

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SOLD to a nice young man from my own little town who bought it for his wife.
This is my top-of-the-line, whiz-bang, does everything but wash the dishes machine.  Kenmore 158.1914, one of the two most sought-after vintage Kenmores.   What makes it so wonderful?  Besides the all-metal solid vintage construction, that is...

It has a free arm, not unknown among classic vintage machines, but certainly not common.

It uses a cam system to create all of these construction and decorative stitches.  Sure, lots of vintage machines have cam systems.  But very few have the forward-and-backward capability to create stretch stitches.  And you can make some extra-cute decorative stitches with the forward-and back system.  Like a row of little duckies, for example.

It comes with ALL the bells and whistles.  All the cams.  A monogrammer with all the letters and numbers.  A buttonholer with all of its cams.

Because I used this as my go-to machine in the studio for several months, you even get a parts cabinet with all the presser feet and other goodies.  I like my presser feet CLEARLY labeled so that I can lay my hands on what I want within seconds.

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and a trio of 3/4 Singer straight stitchers, all adapted to hand crank use (motors available upon request).  These make dandy machines for teaching children to sew, or for taking with you in your RV or to your remote cabin.

Singer 99

Singer 192, Spartan

Singer 185

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and a pair of the wonderful Singer 301s.  One in black, one in mocha.  The mocha one is SOLD.

Singer 301, in cabinet with cradle

and the mocha one, much prettier in person

with a zigzagger and all the stitch cams

in a nice cabinet with cradle, and sewing stool with storage

 If you don't know the 301s, well, you should.  They are aluminum rather than cast iron, mechanically very similar to the Featherweights, but a full size machine.  They sew much faster than most vintage machines.  They sit in a special cradle when installed in a cabinet, and you can pop them in and out of it in seconds--great for taking to quilting classes or workshops. 

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Another trio, this time of some of my personal faves, the aqua blue Singers of the mid 1960s.  These were mid-range rather than top-of-the-line machines, but a mid-range all metal vintage machine can still sew rings around a modern plastic machine.  They are a bit loud, however.

Singer 337

The 337 is a zig-zag machine (no cams).  Last Christmas the simple zig-zag machines were the best sellers.  Very easy to learn to use.

Singer 338

SOLD to a nice young woman who is getting ready to go to college and will take this with her.
The 338 uses Singer flat cams, my favorite cam system for ease of use.  And of course if you are not interested in other stitches, you can just leave the zig-zag cam in it and ignore the other stitches!

Singer 348

Sigh.  I bought a 348 in 1968 and sewed on it (LOTS) until the year 2000 when it laid down and died.  I very, very stupidly threw it away, thinking that surely I deserved a nice new machine after 32 years.  The plastic machine that replaced it lasted 18 months. I could have just repaired or replaced the motor on the 348 and I would still be sewing on the machine that took me from hippie dresses made from Indian bedspreads, through sewing for three kids, countless home dec projects, and into quilting. (Wipes away a tear).

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WITHDRAWN.  Two years in a row I have talked a potential buyer out of buying this machine (they both chose something else).  I just don't believe in this machine.  I can't really recommend the bobbin system.  It's noisy to the point of being worrisome.  And then I discovered that the needle position lever is not working. I don't sell things that have known problems.  But before I withdrew it, this is what I said:

I even have a Touch N Swear Sew on offer.  Although these machines have a bad reputation, the earliest ones still have the all-metal internal construction (which is all I buy).  This one is from the earliest line of Touch N Sew, a 603.  My aunt has a 603 that she loves, and actually replaced her original one with another one of the same model.  One of the big selling points of the Touch N Sews is that they wind the bobbin in the machine, which seems very silly to me but hey, whatever floats your boat.

The 601 would have been top-of-the-line, with a built in camstack.  The 603 does not have the cam stack, but instead takes one cam at a time.  I feel the same way about camstacks that I feel about power windows in cars:  something expensive is just WAITING to go wrong.  I really prefer the one-cam-at-a-time approach, and for another reason too:  I don't have to get the manual out every time I want to change a stitch pattern.  Not a problem if you sew on one machine all the time, you learn its little ways, but I sew on dozens of machines.

For me the real appeal of the 603, and the reason I bought it, is that it will do a chain stitch.  Chain stitches use just the top thread, no bobbin thread, and make a stitch that is easily removeable--find the right end and just pull it out.   Fabulous wherever you need a temporary seam.

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Sorry, but I do not ship machines. Nor will I hold them for you, or sell you one sight-unseen (ie, hold one for you that you paid for in advance).  But if you are in or near the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, that's where I am too.

I will, however, cart anything not sold to the next NC TOGA upon request, where you can check it out before deciding whether to buy it or not.  Contact me at the end of January if you are interested in seeing something at the TOGA (Treadle On Gathering and Academy).  Special pricing on many of them for TOGA-teers, who generally do their own mechanical work and don't usually buy at retail prices.