Wednesday 9 April 2008

Finished Flowers

Thought that it was about time I got around to posting the pictures of the finished crocheted flowers that I posted about earlier.



I was very pleased with the end result. The flowers were crocheted out of some cream wool and then I dyed them using some lace dyes and some ink. The ink gave some very vivid colours and I will be interested to see how colour fast they will be. When I dyed them I rinsed them until the water ran clear, added some more dye for highlights, zapped them again in the microwave and then rinsed them again before leaving them to dry.

The blue and red dyes combined to create some very nice purple tones.

The last batch were very orange and I liked how bright they looked. What do you think?

For the centres I dyed some strands of wool yellow and then stitched lots of French Knots. I like how these contrast with the texture of the crochet.

Each flower was then put onto a coilless safety pin so that it could be pinned to a place card. That leads to a quick explanation of why I was experimenting with these to start with. I was asked to do some place cards by my MIL for a birthday celebration she was having and she was not looking for anything in particular so that gave me free reign to try something new and dyeing wool is something I had not tried before. The flowers were something small to practise on.

I was pretty pleased with the result and will have some more fun soon making some more flowers, dyeing them and tucking them away for later use. I was also pleased to get in some practise with French Knots - something that I often avoided stitching. Repeated practise sure helps to perfect the technique!

7 comments:

  1. The flowers are very cute and what a great idea a name card and a keep sake. I'm sure your MIL will love them. The dyed wool is very effective.

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  2. What a great idea! I love that they are so brilliant in color! Good job!

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  3. The flowers are gorgeous!!! Love the colours!!

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  4. aww, that makes a name card totally more interesting.

    Arlene,
    Port Orchard florist

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  5. The dye and ink was an effective technique - the colours look great!
    Your MIl will be thrilled.

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  6. Oh they're all beautiful, especially love the purple one :O)

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  7. Oh very nice and they will be so versatile for clothes, hats, bags etc. Just beautiful.

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