Peace, love and tie-dye, plus dinosaur long johns

I've been playing with the dye pot and fabric paints again, oh no! Sometimes the results are good; sometimes not so much.

This tee shirt turned out pretty well.  I used the low-water immersion method of dyeing, where you put the piece in a plastic bag with a small amount of water, dye and fixative.  I poured two colors in there:  turquoise and yellow.  The result was a kind of green:

After I dyed it, I used fabric paint to stamp some stars on it.  Stamping results in a kind of transparent, not very visible mark.  So I also used some stenciling around the neckline, which results in a more opaque mark for some reason.  Maybe because you end up putting down more paint.

Here is a detail:

On the back I drew some spirals free hand, squeezing the fabric paint out of a little applicator bottle. It was fun.  Makes you wonder why you don't draw on your clothes all the time.

Also I dyed some capri pants I got from Walmart last summer.  The colors are cerulean blue and turquoise.  Then I stenciled some shapes on the legs.  These were not so successful I think:  the design is too rigid or something.

The yellow moons, which you can barely see, were stamped on.

Then I made a little hooded fleece top for my niece, using an Ottobre magazine pattern:

The fleece came from Hancock's, and it was pretty good quality for Hancock's.  However, if I had had time, I probably would have ordered the really good stuff online. The best fleece, IMHO, is Polartec from Malden Mills. There's an outlet online where you can get it cheap.

This pattern had a really cute feature:  the reverse applique on the front pocket, and then here on the back too:

My new sewing machine came in useful for this:  you use triple reinforcing stitch to stitch around the petal shapes, through the fleece layer and the contrasting layer piece underneath.  This was tricky at first, but I got better at it. Then you cut away inside the shapes to reveal the other color underneath.  (You use a piece of tear-away stabilizer under all layers.)

From a different Ottobre magazine, I made some boys' long johns, using the beloved dinosaur skull knit fabric I got last summer:

The idea here was that the seams would be on the outside for comfort, and then would be covered by this rib knit.  It worked, but then that left a big wad of several layers

of fabric at the crotch seam.  But I fixed that by zigzagging

it down.