Learn how to dye yarn with Kool-Aid® and Cake Icing Gels

Learn how to dye yarn with Kool-Aid^® and Cake Icing Gels
at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s Quilts & Fibre show

A series of fun demonstrations at the Quilts & Fibre exposition will show visitors how to use common home and garden ingredients to dye yarns and fabrics in a rainbow of unique colours. Local expert, Louise Leblanc-Mazur, will explain how to prepare fabrics for dyeing and use mordants or fixatives that help make the dyes colour fast. There will be a total of four dyeing presentations over the course of the two-day event: Kool-Aid^® and Cake Icing Gels onSaturday and Acid and Walnut dyes on Sunday.

“Dyeing demonstrations are just the tip of the iceberg,” says long-time Twistle Guild member, Mary Ellen Gowland. “Throughout the weekend, members of the Twistle Guild of Glengarry will be showing how easy it is to spin wool with wheels and hand spindles. We’ll also have a small loom set up.” Local women who wanted to learn the art of spinning founded the Twistle Guild over 30 years ago. And the group — now a spinning and weaving guild — currently has close to 30 active members who meet once a month in each other’s homes. During the summer, the Guild gathers at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum in Dunvegan on Fridays for a spinning free-for-all.

Another local group of the crafters, the Martintown Wild & Woolly Rug Hookers, will be on hand to show visitors why this age-old craft is enjoying a such a strong resurgence. One of the group’s members, Ruby MacGregor of Maxville, will be bringing her vintage rug-hooking frame and a bucket of wool “worms” so people can see how simple it is to master the basics of this homespun art form. In addition, there will be demonstrations of how to knit using just one’s hands and fingers… no needles… and an introduction to the art of Japanese embroidery, bunka shishu.

Visitors to the Quilt & Fibre exposition will also be treated to displays of historic and contemporary quilts, vintage hooked rugs donated to the Dunvegan museum over the years, as well as modern rugs by local hookers. Plus there will be examples of weaving, lace making and other fibre art from the Museum’s collection and the community at large… along with a fascinating display of antique sewing implements.

To round out the event, organizers have even invited a number of crafting supply vendors. The list includes “BAA BAA Bundles” purveyors of reclaimed wool, silks, velvets, funky fibers & fat quarters; “Hooked on the Lake” with its collection of patterns and beautiful wool fabrics, many of which have been over-dyed; and the “Fabric Box”, specialists in quilting and sewing supplies of all kinds.

The Quilts & Fibre: From then ‘til now show is taking place June 28^th and 29^th from 11 am to 4 pm at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum in Dunvegan (located at the crossroads of County Road 24 and County Road 30). Admission is only $5.00 and refreshments will available on-site, so you and your family can stay all day.