Tuesday 1 May 2012

Study Abroad Fair at Curtin

Kate Snowdon and I ran the Herts University study abroad stand at the international fair today.  We had a fair amount of interest from students wanting to go to the UK, and the main appeal seemed to be the good exchange rate from Australian dollar to Pound Sterling (don't we know it!) and the proximity of Herts to the facilities of London, without central London prices.

Kate Snowdon, journalism student and
Tanya Talati, International Student Exchange Co-ordinator

This afternoon I plucked up my courage and dyed a 4m length of devore silk velvet.  The fabric alone costs about $100, without the devore and dye processes, so if it went wrong I would have ruined some very expensive material.  The sample I did the other day, dyed well in a lovely sandy beige colour, and this time I wanted to make a rich plummy brown.  The silk background grabs the colour strongly, and the viscose pile takes the dye in a much more subtle way.  It took ages to bring a 20 litre pan of dye to the right temperature, but I followed the instructions very carefully, and did not hurry the process.  It is difficult to get an even colouring but I was very pleased with the result.  The photos show the fabric pegged up after rinsing, so the colours will change again after it is dry.  The devored background was exactly the colour I wanted, but I was surprised at how pale the viscose pile is. 

Silk viscose devore velvet pegged up to dry
It captures the colours we saw in eucalyptus tree trunks on our roadtrip in December.  Quite a successful dyeing experiment.

2 comments:

  1. Heya Cathy! Thank you for featuring me in your blog! He's a link to my UH blog :)
    http://soapbox.uhsu.co.uk/users/kate

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your blog posts are well written, particularly the one about how to cope at the beginning of semester when everything goes wrong! I've been there!

      Delete