Tie-dyeing for little ones

While I let my kids tie-dye with real dyes occasionally, it’s a bit of a nightmare. This is much easier, and a good activity for a group of young kids.

Needed-food dyes and paper towel. You can get recycled, biodegradable paper towel now, which can be composted when you’re done with it.

Mix up the food dyes with water in bowls. Make the colours fairly strong, you want them to pop.

Give the kids a sheet of towel and explain that how you fold the paper affects the pattern of the dye. Suggest they try squares, triangles, crumpled balls and any other origami they can think of. When they’re happy with their fold get them to dip one corner/edge in their chosen colour-it will wick up the paper towel reasonably fast, so emphasise that they’ll only need to hold it there for a few seconds. Then remove, shake, and put another corner/edge in a different colour, as many times as you can-usually only three.

Unfold and see what pattern has appeared! Repeat until you run out of towel, most likely. Once dry use for other crafts and play-wrapping small presents, cutting and pasting shapes, mosaics, over-drawing pictures based on dye shapes etc etc.

 

You can also try ‘dyeing’ paper. This is blank newsprint our neighbour gave us, and the result of using straws to add then blow the dye around. It was used as wrapping paper for birthday presents.

  

Best of all? It all washes off straightaway. No blue cheek like my Frosty has at present.

Christmas 2010

And i’ve managed to get these up by February-that’s excellent for me!
First up, a tie-dyed t-shirt for each of the kids. It looks a bit ‘crazy homeschooled family’ when they all decide to wear them at once and are sort of matching, but meh.
 

For Oods, a book bag. She is a total bookworm, so now has her very own bag with pockets for her library card and other treasures. Instead of adding her books to the family pile and having us do it all, she does it all herself. And doesn’t she just love it?
I’ve got all the pics for a tutorial for this-i’ll get around to writing it sometime.

I made the boys a backpack each, using the pattern and tute from Indietutes. If I did it again I would line them, but overall it’s pretty good pattern for beginners. All from stash fabric, i’m still attempting to use it all up-I swear, it BREEDS.

The husband gets the credit for these beauties-he’s completely onboard with the handmade now, and made these for the clones. Five is probably a bit old in mainstream terms for hobby horses, but no-one has told them that so they’ve been thoroughly enjoying them.


For the husband, the Bastard Shorts. He didn’t actually get these on the day-he received a parcel of the pieces cut out because he didn’t get out of the house enough for me to finish them. They’re bastards because he made me make them properly-waistband, facing, fly etc ad nauseum. I was just going to elastic waistband them-he told me that he is not a toddler and wears real clothes. Ahem. The Spotlight pattern was terrible and I swore a lot-BUT I DID THEM. Now I can erase them from memory.

The kids made presents for each other too, but I don’t have photos of much without them in it. However, Oods made this patchwork cushion for the husband all by herself, having never done patchwork before. I was pretty impressed.
 
Then churned out a small bag for each of her siblings.

Santa brought a set of Derwents, a box of craft supplies and the Planet Earth/Life boxed set, which we’re still working through. Plus a few little things that we never get them otherwise, like hairclips. We’re not good at frippery, so we’re lucky Santa is.
Then, the food. Oh, the food! Unconventional, but proof you can have a delicious feast without killing anything or putting on 5kgs.

Grissini and crudites with tzatziki and spinach, garlic and feta dips. Lentil balls with relish and vegies baked in cheese sauce. Chocolate pudding and blueberry cheesecake. And lots of fresh fruit. All made from scratch, including the yogurt for the tzatziki, and some of it homegrown. It took us two days to finish it all up, and I was sad when we did.

Wool covers & pinny

Catch-up post here-I finished these last week. The two wooly covers, ready to go. They've given me motivation to recycle more fabric, I can't believe they were ratty old blankets.

They're a lot bigger than newborn, probably a medium. I haven't used FOE in yonks and forgot it doesn't have anywhere near as much stretch as swimwear elastic. I bound the front edges in suedecloth, eliminating the need to bugger around with overlapping FOE, which nearly always looks messy.

Holli's dress. Overall i'm pretty happy with it, but even though I narrowed it down more from the last time I used this pattern, it's still too wide across the shoulders! My skinny little clones swim in everything. It still fits adequately though, and she adores it-hence the dirty marks already, as trying it on involved going outside to show everyone and then having a shot on the swings.

A new obsession

Dyeing! I've wanted to do if for ages but it's one of those things that never got around to. I bought a Procion pack the other week from Fairy Fabrics (and also got excellent, prompt service and some freebie FOE) but as I haven't yet had the money to go get the rest of the gear needed it's still sitting on my desk. No, it won't cost much, but D has only been working for two weeks and before that we were stuck on the Centrelink studying lifestyle-not so good when we've moved interstate and since then had to pay our rates, insurances and rego.

However, someone suggested wool dyeing with food dye. I have old woolen blankets i've been felting up specifically for this, I have vinegar, I have food dye, so yesterday I got cracking on some newborn covers.

Method-soak wool in some water with vinegar for four hours. I used a large mixing bowl with 2 cups vinegar.

Mix up some food dye with water-I used a dash in about 3/4 of a cup.

Lay out some Glad Wrap on a surface you don't care too much about (mental note-not the cream laminex benches of my rental)

Squeeze out wool until it's fairly dry, then pour/drip on dye. I used a tablespoon and a medicine dropper and liked the dropper best, but one bigger than 5mL would have made life easier.

Wrap in Glad Wrap and microwave for two minutes, then rest for two minutes. Do this three times.

Let cool, remove from wrap, rinse with water and lay flat to dry.

The stripey one was first, and I don't think it was quite wet enough or the dye colour strong enough. I then overcompensated on the splotchy one and made it too wet, so my yellow and blue splotches mixed a bit too much! I also need to find something reusable to replace the Glad Wrap, I went through a disgusting amount to make these.

Now to stick some fold-over elastic around them and see whether i've drafted up a decent pattern! It's also inspired me to dye up some yarn in nice, strong boys colours.........one day.