Sunday, 20 April 2014

Easter Egg Fun! Naturally Dyed with Red Cabbage!

No sewing today! However I couldn't resist sharing this morning's madness.  Boiled cabbage Easter Eggs!  


Eggs, vinegar and chopped red cabbage.


Boiled hard.


Lifting the egg out part way through and it looks like nothing is happening.  If your eggs were brown at the start, most of the brown will now rub off.


It only rubs off when the egg is wet. Here you can see the paler egg colour beneath.


A rubbed down egg!


The eggs look purple when wet, but they dry to a bluey colour. Daubing more drops of the cabbage water onto the egg as it dries creates interesting patterns.


The result - an assorted pile of interesting egg colours.


Now they just need rolled down a hill somewhere. 

Saturday, 5 April 2014

Saturday Sewing.

Kerry called in today and we got the sewing machines out. Here's what she was working on.


And to get in the sewing mood we put "Great British Sewing Bee" on in the background.  (Thanks iplayer.)


I had an idea to make another patchwork jacket using an old fleece as a base.  This time in blues rather than reds.  (Previous post here: Crazy Patchwork Jacket)

The donor fleece was an old work fleece of Tim's.  I cut out zip, cuffs, and pockets.  Then unpicked the underarm seams all the way to create this roughly flat shape.


It was a bit large, so I used my earlier jacket as a template and trimmed away the excess.


With a little help from Finn, I pinned more fleece over the holes left by the pockets.  (Check out what else Finn gets up to here Ability for Agility.)


Patchwork fabrics were mostly blue this time, and sewn on using a zigzag stitch, which is much quicker than the turn-under method I used last time.


Kerry meanwhile was also getting help from Finn.


As she started to lay out the layers of material for her quilt.  This is to be lighter than the last couple she has made, so the inner this time is simply a cheap fleece throw from Ikea.


Then the tiresome job of stitching in the ditch in all directions, with the rest of the quilt rolled up.  


On the jacket, I decided that I wanted a smaller collar than was already on the fleece, so I trimmed it back, and used the trimmed portion as a template to cut a curved piece of denim to fit.


As the collar stands up, the outer edge of the denim needed snips cut in it, and these were hidden under the patch pieces coming up to the neck line.


This is how far I got today.  So far I'm pleased with it.


But both quilt and jacket will have to wait until another day to get completed.
Watch this space!