fiber arts!

Discussion in 'Make It So' started by jacktrash, Jun 3, 2015.

  1. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    Doggie’s coming along!

    8C39A376-D763-4504-91A9-36E5438EDEEA.jpeg 534FD58D-0026-4A61-A62C-72C3E4517EE2.jpeg FDEE6390-8E84-4EA7-AB92-F0E80391BE52.jpeg 0189DBDA-C282-49E5-8CE0-1DE88639968A.jpeg

    She is, I have discovered, a Boston terrier, and her name is Pansy (subject of course to renaming and/or re-gendering by the recipient upon transfer of ownership.)

    This is the test-stuffing. Right now she’s held together entirely with a running stitch, which is fast, but not very strong. Shortly I’m going to turn her inside out again and go back over all her seams with a back-cross-stitch in the softer pink cotton thread, and then possibly go over the whole thing again in the stronger polyester thread and do some rolled seams (as suggested by my mom.)
     
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  2. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    I finished the doggie! Just in time for Christmas presents!

    upload_2019-12-25_21-28-25.png

    Sylvie was a little too unconscious to really appreciate it, but her dad was impressed; he pronounced it “very dog-shaped.”

    Later, Sylvie woke up, and I presented it to her officially.

    She was all like,

    upload_2019-12-25_21-30-30.png

    upload_2019-12-25_21-28-52.png

    upload_2019-12-25_21-29-33.png

    “The hell am I supposed to do with this?”
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2019
    • Winner x 14
  3. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    So I got Star Wars Even More Crochet for Christmas and here is my first little dude! It's a Jawa and I'm prolly gonna have to make 'em a little buddy later.

    20191229_183919(1).jpg
     
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  4. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    I hate starting a new craft and being Not Good at a thing when I spend most of my time on hobbies I am good at, but! I really, REALLY love being so early in the learning curve that I can see myself leveling up row by row :D I think I'm going to abandon this sweater, because this ribbing is as interesting as it gets, and the ribbing is... minimally interesting. So I'll probably frog this soon, but it's been very nice seeing myself go from having to carefully, carefully wrangle every single purl stitch to being able to do it without consciously thinking about it

    take one level in knitting.jpg

    (for real though, it's so WEIRD figuring out how to Feel the tension when I'm juggling a hundred live loops at once and slipping yarn off my needles between stitches, instead of crochet, where I've only got one loose end at a time and all my tension is right there in front of me)
     
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  5. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    YEAHHHHH, I always forget how much I really, really like learning new skills.

    take two levels in knitting.jpg

    I'm probably going to abandon this project too, may or may not frog it, because I've absorbed most of the new skills this pattern requires, and the yarn is too busy of a color to really dig into the other bits. I think tomorrow... I'm going to start knitting the severed horse head. I've wanted to make this thing for over a decade. I used to pass the bookmark from computer to computer while I was still in school, but by now it's just drilled into my brain. What do I want to knit? Easy question, the severed horse head!!!

    In more serious project work, I think.... next I probably want to focus on fancey colorwork. I think that will be less frustrating than complicated shaping while my fingers get used to this. Or I could dig out my grandma's sweater patterns and have a stab at cables, but I've got limited needles on hand at this point down the knitting pit. Or, I could try spinning, because my parents are FANTASTIC about supporting my weird hobbies and better at following through on them than I am, and they got me the cute little electric eel nano spinning wheel for my birthday. I tried it once, spun some """yarn""", and severely bruised my ego by not immediately being a natural, but it's time to go back in and git gud
     
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  6. paladinkit

    paladinkit brave little paladin

    ONE OF US ONE OF US

    (sorry I just get stupid excited whenever someone says they want to learn spinning)
     
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  7. Lizardlicks

    Lizardlicks Friendly Neighborhood Lizard

    • Winner x 7
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  8. Lizardlicks

    Lizardlicks Friendly Neighborhood Lizard

    • Winner x 4
  9. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    GORGEOUSSSSSS
     
    • Agree x 4
  10. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    You guys- and I’ve already been talking about this on the Fantasy Farm thread- I’ve been messaging this person who’s selling eri silkworm eggs on ebay, and they offered to sell me some of their cocoons for $5 per 30 grams, and I just offered to buy $25 worth, which works out to about 5.3ish ounces of unprocessed silk cocoons.

    Sight unseen of course, so I’m not sure what caterpillar poop situation’s gonna be.

    I am v excite and also have no more idea what I’m supposed to be doing than I can get from searching Google.

    I’m thinking of felting some of it and using it to make the mane for Sylvie’s bee-pony.

    (Do I know how to felt? No! Do I know how to spin? Also no! I shall be doing this anyway!)
     
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  11. TheOwlet

    TheOwlet A feathered pillow filled with salt and science

    Can you (General you) even felt with silk? I thought it was too smooth for that
     
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  12. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people talking about felting with eri silk, but I’m having some source amnesia so I should probably go google it.

    It’s certainly sproingier than mulberry silk, and gets spun rather than reeled, so it doesn’t make quite as smooth a yarn.

    Hold on, Imma go look that up. Meantime, here’s the eri silkworm video I’ve been showing everyone lately:

     
    • Informative x 1
  13. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    Huh. Found it.
    -These Guys

    Guess you can, then.
     
    • Informative x 2
  14. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

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    dyed some wool with onion skin and turmeric. destination: CURRY SOCKS.
     
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  15. chthonicfatigue

    chthonicfatigue Bitten by a radioactive trickster god

    Fibre crafters: I have two vintage pure wool, woven blankets in a rather appalling shade of surgical-appliance pink check with a cream background. They need some darning as they've been heavily used but they're super warm and comfy and buying anything comparable would likely cost well into the hundreds these days.

    Q1: Can I dye them and if so, how
    Q1: if yea, darn before or after dying
    Q3: how likely is dye to affect the fibre softness
     
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  16. Lizardlicks

    Lizardlicks Friendly Neighborhood Lizard

    Thank yoooooou I'm so happy with it!
     
    • Like x 1
  17. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    yes, you can dye it! you can use natural dyes, food dyes, or commercial fabric dyes, and which you pick affects the process.

    darn before dyeing and make sure you use wool to darn it. that way it will end up the same color.

    it won’t affect the softness. the only way i’ve had dye affect the hand of the fabric was if i used too much alum mordant.
     
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  18. Jean

    Jean Let’s stop procrastinating -- tomorrow!

    Mom's been handing out fiber recently.
    [​IMG]
    Not sure what to do with this, but i love it.
     
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  19. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    The cocoons came!

    upload_2020-1-17_23-15-5.jpeg

    I took 10 and simmered them in baking soda and dish soap, which is not the recipe given any of the resources I found, but I wanted to see if I could achieve the same effect without going on a shopping trip specifically for this project.

    upload_2020-1-17_23-18-6.jpeg

    tasty.

    The brown floaty bits are crunchy leftover pupa shell that come out when you squish the cocoons.

    Result the first:

    upload_2020-1-17_23-20-24.jpeg

    They were certainly cleaner, but didn’t seem particularly degummed. I ended up simmering them a second time, with More Stuff added, which loosened them up enough that I could pull them apart with my fingers. They were still pretty stiff, though, so I’m not sure I actually should have. And most of them left a stubborn little interior envelope that refused to give up its threads. I’m thinking simmer those again.

    But er mah gerd unraveling the cocoons is so satisfying.

    upload_2020-1-17_23-24-23.jpeg

    look at the floofs I made!
     
    • Winner x 10
  20. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    Hokay I did another batch, slightly bigger, about the same length of simmering time as the first, but with More Stuff from the beginning.

    Result:

    upload_2020-1-19_20-26-20.jpeg

    This looks about like I think it’s supposed to. Cocoons came apart very easily, but also the threads got very tangled together.

    Here’s what they look like unraveled:

    upload_2020-1-19_20-28-28.jpeg

    They came apart so easily, in fact, that some parts still have cocoon-shaped bits that came off in layers. And they also formed more readily into yarn-like locks/strands.

    Here are the two batches side-by-side for comparison:

    upload_2020-1-19_20-32-20.jpeg

    So, the results I’ve gotten are definitely different, but I don’t know which one is actually better?

    I’d expect the newer batch to have longer/more unbroken strands, because I used less mechanical force to unravel them- but they’re so tangled together I’m not sure if they’ll stay that way.

    Anyone here know more about spinning silk than me? (Even just knowing about spinning means you know more about spinning silk than me.)

    The only how-to I’ve found about eri silk is this one gal who pulls and spins her yarn straight from the cocoon with just her fingers, which actually looks pretty interesting so I might try that with the next batch, but I wanted to try with the whole combing and spinning process first.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2020
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