Already this week we had over 80 degree heat and I had to turn on the air conditioning. Thus ends the blissful period in which neither the heat nor the air conditioning have to be on, truncating the few months of respite that is often enjoyed between the high gas bill and the high electric bill, which I think “winter” and “summer” might be renamed, respectively. A very bright aspect of the season is the generous rainfall thus far, which is making the lawn and landscape lush and healthful.
Yesterday I had to do everybody’s taxes. So no post. I think the laws of nature are on my side with that excuse!
The construction process on the web sites continues, it is a wonderful creative journey in itself. I am learning a lot about Photoshop and Facebook and all kinds of social media, in short, being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
I finished the pompom tassels last night at long last, these were absolutely a work in in progress. These pompoms are a mish mash of leftover fibers from my stash, as I mentioned. Making these pompoms is tedious but is fun and is something that can be done right in front of the TV if you choose. In the process of constructing these, I learned a lot about fibers and the way they behave. In the end, it really to comes down to this: as long as about ¾ of the pompom is pure wool, the pompom will “fluff out”. If you look closely at these tassels you will see:
• Crewel wool – most of this is leftover Appleton’s
• Tapestry wool- mostly DMC
• Silk n’ Ivory from Brown Paper Packages
• Kreinik metallic threads
• Splendor silk
• Caron Watercolors and Waterlilies *
• DMC and/or Anchor floss
• Very Velvet from Rainbow Gallery
And probably some I forgot about…
I like to use my leftover fibers (and some that I bought and for which I simply haven’t found a use) in creative ways, and go figure, often times that is on a tassel. If the colors aren’t right, you can dye them. Jacquard dyes work wonderfully for silk and cotton, and Procion dyes from Dharma trading will cover rayon and natural viscose. You really can’t dye nylon or other synthetic fibers, but most of what I use with needlepoint and passementerie (tassel making) are natural fibers anyway. Check back a couple of posts ago and you will see an example, various natural fibers that I dyed to make some pretty red tassels.
Roping it back in to the pompom tassels, I didn’t use any dyes here, and they are naturally a variety of colors that I thought looked very nice together. The form is done in silk ribbon embroidery with beads and glitter.
This process has made me recall that I need to and the “color 101”section to the howtomaketassels.com web site. Back to work!
* These variegated threads are a great source for color matching. More on this soon!
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