My First Attempt at Hand Dying Stitching Fabrics

Hi there Stitching & Crafting Friends & Blog Followers! 

I have been seeing people hand dying their own stitching fabrics over the years and plus seeing it online to buy and at needlecraft stores. I've always loved it and have been thinking about trying it myself for quite some time, but never had the guts to actually try it. Well, today I took the plunge. :) I wanted to try to create a marbled look with a light yellow and a light green for an HAED pattern that I am going to be stitching called Hold on to Hope. I used the bucket dye bath method and RIT Lemon Yellow and RIT Kelly Green. And although it didn't come out anything like I had wanted it to, I do still like it. However, I will most likely not be using it for the pattern that I had planned it for. I think it came out too dark for that pattern.  

Here is what the pattern looks like ... 

Here is the first hand dyed fabric that I made. I first put the fabric in the bucket dye bath with yellow and then put it in with the green. If you look closely, you can see a little bit of marbling in the colors. 

Here is the second hand dyed fabric that I made. With this one I put the fabric in the bucket dye bath with the yellow. And then I used a spray bottle with the green to give it more marbling than the last one.  

I don't think the first fabric will work out with the HAED Hold on to Hope pattern bcuz I think it may be too vibrant in color. I think MAYBE the second one might work. But I'm not 100% sure. I would really like some feedback on this one if you could please. I appreciate it lots! :) 

Looking forward to hearing what you all think. 

Happy Stitching & Crafting! 

Until Next Time,

♥ Margie ♥

Another Finish & a Couple of Updates!

Hello Friends and Fellow Stitchers and Crafters! 

It's been a while since I've posted and I realized I forgot to post a photo of my second finish of 2012! I crocheted a scarf for my son and have put it away for the holidays. :) I think it turned out pretty good. I think he's really going to like it ... well at least I hope he will. 

Here is a photo of it ... 

So what do you think? I hope this photo posts correctly. I used PhotoBucket and used their program to adjust the size of the photo. But they changed they way their website is set up and I kept getting an error message. And even though the site showed the additional copy of the photo, saved to the new size, I'm not so sure it actually did save to the new size. 

Anyway, so I did attempt to get Elemental Cosmos finished in time to enter into the county fair for this year, but with all of the kids activities both in and outside of school, and the time it takes to stitch on black evenweave (SO NOT easy), I was not able to finish it in time. So I put it back on the back burner, temporarily, while I work on the birth announcement piece that I designed for one of my best friends and her husband. I was making some good progress on it, and then I discovered a mistake. That mistake caused me to have to take out a bunch of stitches. I am just about finished re-stitching all that I had to take out, without the mistake of course. 

Here is where I'm at with that piece at the moment ... 

It's coming along and I hope to be finished before the end of the week. Again, I'm not sure if the size of this photo will show up correctly. I hope it does. :) 

As I said, I also worked on Elemental Cosmos a little bit. So I thought I would post a photo of my progress on that as well ... 

It's coming along slowly. You can see where the stars are that I added the beads. Do you think it looks alright? As for the size on this photo, I started playing around with sizing photos on PhotoShop and then uploading them to PhotoBucket and maybe this will help. 

Well that is all I have for now. Looking forward to hearing your feedback. 

Happy Stitching & Crafting!!! :) 

Until Next Time,

♥ Margie ♥

PS ~ I messed with the photos a little bit on PhotoShop and then on here and I think I got the photos looking just right now! :)