So we began our week in history by learning how the colonial settlers would have had to sew and dye their own clothing....and there wouldn't have been a Wal-Mart nearby to buy all that stuff! I thought this would be a great time to do some cloth dyeing here at home with some stuff sitting around the house. Totally fun, and the results surprised us.
First off, though, Julia got to make a colonial girl paper doll. She's sort of set up like a flip-book, so that Julia can change her clothing simply by flipping the different layers.
First off, though, Julia got to make a colonial girl paper doll. She's sort of set up like a flip-book, so that Julia can change her clothing simply by flipping the different layers.
Then we got to work in the kitchen making dyes! I set up four pots of boiling water, and we threw in four different things: coffee grounds, rose petals, carnation petals and onion skins. Then we put two kinds of fabric into each pot and let them steep a bit. After taking them out and observing the different colors, we put them onto our dye chart.
Here's Julia stirring our different pots of dye.
Here's Julia stirring our different pots of dye.
We were surprised to find that the pink rose petals dyed the fabric an ugly and boring tan (top swatches) and that the onion skins made a really pretty yellow (bottom).
We also finished up our pop-up cards started last week of the different kinds of colonial houses there were....from small log cabins to large brick homes.
Heather and Clint were a bit too busy today for any craft-like stuff. It gets like that in high-school, when you're spending all your time just trying to finish hard math and long writing projects. But I will tell you that in the last couple of weeks we've been studying John Bunyan and reading an abridged version of Pilgrim's Progress. And Heather loved the book so much she wanted to read the original version, which she started today.
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