Friday, October 20, 2006

Dying For the Weekend

purple velvet scarf sample red and blue velvet scarf sample

Last summer, in an attempt to "generate a new income stream," I decided to try dying silk velvet yardage and sew scarves from it. I hoped this project would pay for itself, and for a good electronic scale I could use for all my dying recipes. (Measuring spoons were increasingly inadequate for my purposes.) I had no sooner gotten my materials together than the substitute teacher gig turned up. Between the classroom and the kitchen (where I was frantically canning garden produce), the dying project dwindled from a scarf or two per weekend down to one dye pot with all my leftover cotton socks.

Cotton sock dyed purple

I did, however, file a couple of dying links.

  • Paula Burch's "All About Hand Dyeing" has been on my bookmarks list for years, but she's recently revamped her Web site, adding new information and improving the look and feel



  • Dharma Trading Company has all the cool stuff from their catalog in an easier-to-use format. They have also added a "Projects" section, with how-to's for many different projects.

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