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Well, if you are following along, remember that my sister and I learned to dye silk yarn and a silk scarf with natural dyes at the Sewing Expo at the end of February. We were supposed to let the silk seep with the colors, and then wash out after a week of seeping. Well, the silk has been hanging in our laundry room for over a week now, and is ready to take pictures. The colors were not as vibrant as I had hoped, but still rather pretty. I asked rockin13 she felt inspired to take pictures of my silk... and she took up the challenge, and was inspired by... shoes?

I love this! "Shoes and Silk"

Also this picture: "Flamingo's Silk Feathers"

Dyeing Silk ~

One of the classes we took at the Sewing Expo was dyeing with natural dyes. The teacher was Roberta from Fiber Etc and she is an amazing woman. She weaves, dyes, knits, spins and has an amazing fiber shop in Tacoma. Since there is no website for her store, here is the information:
Fibers Etc (253) 572-1859
705 Court C, #301, Tacoma, WA 98402

We took a class from her last year on knitting with unusual yarns, and she had samples of yarns out of metal, corn, soy, crab shells, milk, jade, paper and some other materials that were very creative and fun to experiment with. This year we learned to dye with natural extracts from bugs (cochineal), plants and trees. She gave us a skein of silk, a white silk scarf and a silk ribbon to practice with, and we had a blast! These pictures were taken after I "set" my colors in our microwave and now they are curing in the laundry room for a week or so before I can wash out the color. They look pretty yucky now, but I wanted a "before" picture for you.... (yuk, eh?)