Harry Potter bag

The fabric for this is a linen mix, I cut a stencil from an Ireland Quidditch logo that I found online, to make the front. The bag is lined with recycled fabric that I had tie-dyed and over printed with a lino cut of the golden snitch. Go Ireland!

Summer tie dyeing

Tie Dyeing makes me so happy, first sign of sunshine and we go mad. All of these fabrics end up getting used in one way or another, mostly as backgrounds for printmaking.


The following prints have all been printed onto tie dyed fabrics, some are commercial rubber stamps, the bees and daleks are my lino cuts.

Such a neglected blog. Here are a few things that I have made in the last while.

Some printed fabrics

This is a simple dalek print, A lino cut onto some tie-dyed fabric, The strips of fabric were inserted into a pair of pillowcases. For Dr, Who dreams. The same fabric was used to make a christmas stocking. The tardis stocking was appliqued, as a matching set. 

napkins printed with a martlet, for medieval re-enactment

Celtic knotwork crow. Corvids are amazing, this was another lino cut onto fabric, strips inserted into a pair of pillowcases

The ground fabric has been tie-dyed and overprinted with a fairly simple lino cut. Celtic knotwork

Mushrooms, linocut, ...I may be a little obsessed!

Last night was cocktail friday, lychinis (very nice!) which inspired another stab (not literally) at lino cutting, There were no mushrooms in the cocktail, this was just an image that I saw on pinterest and thought I would have a go at trying to reproduce (it is not original!) I cut each mushroom seperately which allowed me to vary the placement.

 I do rather like the red on pinkish tie-dye, the busy pattern comes up as an overall softer feel like this.

 This was a piece of floral fabric that I had knocking around, that I really didn't like much, it was very old fashioned, but the addition of the very dark mushrooms makes it pop, softens the original print and gives almost a 3D feel...love!

 One mushroom missing, giving a more spacy look

This is destined to be a pillowcase cover.

Anatomical hearts lino cut on fabric

My second lino cut, anatomical hearts, Love how this one turned out!

 I tried overprinting red on black, freehanding the registration, I rather like the 3D effect that it gives.

Close up of the hearts on a preprinted piece of fabric

 And on a tyedyed piece. I dyed this one years ago and now the whole thing has a very trippy feel.

spiral print tie-Dye tutorial

These pictures were taken in the last of the summer...trust me there is no going outside these days with all the rain and the coldness!..but the colours make me happy.

This is the finished result. i use fibre reactive dyes. I make up a strong dye solution, with just water. I only own dyes in the primary colours, so I mix up red blue and yellow dyes, power and water, in disposable containers!..you only need about 1/2 pint of strong colours. And then mix blue+red=purple etc, to give me the three secondary colours.

 Start with piece of prewashed cloth (to remove any starch) I used a square about a yard long/wide. Lay it flat on the ground in front of you and grasp the centre point and start to twist

it will look like this if you let go...dont let go.

keep twisting, keeping the fabric fairly flat to the ground, until you end up with a tight spiral of all of the fabric, arrange the pleats as you go to keep it fairly neat.

For a rainbow spiral, take three long pieces of string, carefully put the first one underneath, bring it to the top and tie off, do this with the two other pieces so that you have the fabric divided into 6 sections (I know a rainbow has 7 colours, but this is a good approximation)

 tie off the string fairly tight (tighter than in this pic) and tuck in the loose ends so you have a neat package

I use the soda soak method of dying, with procion fibre reactive dyes, this means that the (dry) fabric gets soaked for about 20 minutes in a strong solution of washing soda and water.





take out the fabric and squeeze out as much of the soaking liquid as you can, keeping the spiral intact. Set it on the draining board of the sink..or work outside..it is messy.

'Fill' in three segments with your three primary colours, yellow, skip one, red, skip one, blue , skip one...( you will notice from the photos that I screwed this up..but it still looks OK, tie dyeing is very forgiving. You don't have to completely soak each segment, some white is good and will look good in the end. Don't worry about staying inside of the lines..as long as you have complimentary colours adjacent to the ones you are adding, they will blend and look great. I use a big paintbrush to put the colour onto the fabric.

You can either put the spiral, very carefully into a plastic bag to allow it to soak for a while, this should increase the intensity of the colour a bit..or if you are like me, cut off the threads, rinse out the fabric to remove excess dye and glory in the eye-popping colour.

this is the  very best way to revive tired bedlinen, makes a great centre for a quilt and is just fun,


once you are done you might find you have dye left over, so scurry all around your house for tired white cotton clothing, chuck them in the soda soak  for about 15 minutes and then have fun!

I'm a Craftster Best of 2010 Winner!