In Case You Were Wondering...

...just what it is I'm going to be demonstrating at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate this weekend, I thought I'd give you a sneak preview. I'm going to be working mostly with transfer dyes, though I suspect that some of Colour Craft's other watercolour and acrylic paints might well sneak in there, too. I'll be working with transfer paints, but I've prepared some background colours using the powdered dyes. I'm much more likely to spill those, so I reckoned that doing that preparation work in the shed was probably a good move!

As you probably know, when you use transfer dyes, you first paint them onto paper, and then 'transfer' the colour from the paper onto the cloth, using a very hot iron (detailed instructions, of course, in the Lovely Lutradur book) (end of plug!). If you haven't done that before, you might not appreciate the incredible transformation that heat brings about to the dyes painted on the paper. So I brought one in from the shed to show you how it works. The first image shown is the dye on the paper; the colours are dark, almost greyish. That is completely changed in the next two images, both taken off that specific piece of paper. The colours are much brighter, and they show up beautifully, first on Lutradur, then on Evolon. I think that's part of the reason I love working with transfer dyes; you get such a lovely surprise when you transfer an image for the first time.

I say surprise, advisedly; if you work as I do, wet on wet, the dyes mix and mingle, so I can never be sure quite what the end result will be. I love that about dyeing in general, and this process in particular. And as you can see, not content with ironing my way through Festival of Quilts, this time, I'm going to iron my way through two days of the Knitting and Stitching Show. Most people go to these things to get away from the ironing!