Embellishing with Hand dyed Velvet

Dyed Rayon Velvet

Rayon dyes vibrantly with Procion Fibre Reactive Dyes and is easy to do. For the two sample pieces I did, I simply painted liquid dye onto soda soaked rayon velvet. 

This is my first time embellishing my Textile Cards with rayon velvet pieces. 

Cattails are naturally fuzzy so the brown velvet was perfect for them. I definitely need to dye more brown velvet. Do these colours speak to you of autumn?

Phew, that bighorn sheep was challenging to free motion stitch. There was a little picking out of extra stitches involved. Note the mid section with the strip of hand dye painted velvet. The velvet was dyed by adding liquid dyes with a paint brush resulting in the mottled look. Oh, the experimenting I need to do to create more materials for textile embellishment. When you do your own dyeing you can paint what ever colours you like together. 

I notice most of my bears are smelling red flowers. It makes the bear seem friendlier, don't you think?

A piece of white with a bit of dry brushed grey dye on it was used to add the birdhouse. More cattails. It looks like a little rain is coming from those clouds.

Flowers draping over a fence. Can you spot the one flower embellished with velvet? In person it gives a little extra dimension as well as a center of interest.

If you like to dye fabric, I hope this inspires you to try dyeing velvet. I've only worked with the rayon velvet which dyes very easily with strong colours. As for cotton velvet, I will have to try some experimenting and let you know.