Lots more Sneaky Ways to save the pennies

curlytop12 · 7 May 2010 at 4:29PM

£2.99 is great! £5 at hobby craft,not seen it for sale anywhere else.(thats the one you can put in the washing machine btw)

sock-knitter · 7 May 2010 at 4:36PM

hi gem, just pm'ed you, for everyone else i got the machine dye from morrisons
sk

babyshoes · 7 May 2010 at 6:51PM

Love the dye tip, pity my jeans tend to wear a hole in the crotch before they fade enough to dye!!!

squiggles · 7 May 2010 at 7:34PM

gem68 wrote: »

£2.99 is great! £5 at hobby craft,not seen it for sale anywhere else.(thats the one you can put in the washing machine btw)

I've saw it in Lloyds the chemist but sorry i dont recall the price but thaught i would mention it anyway as it would give you another option of where to purchase it.

Uniscots97 · 7 May 2010 at 8:55PM

Here's some ideas I've put into practise recently:-

- using old envelopes for shopping lists
- leaving my oven door open after cooking to help heat the room
- when making 2 cups of tea using 1 tea bag (I like my tea pretty weak anyway)
- if I find tiny holes in t-shirts caused by them snagging on zips on other items of clothing I'll darn them and cover over with beads or sequins and arrange in a pattern (started this using a small bead necklace found at a jumble sale for 10p). This also works for updating clothes too.
- in the colder weather I'll wear my summer vest tops with complimentary coloured long sleeved tops, saves buying lots of clothes and keeps you warm.
- when I snapped the laces on my deck shoes I used the ribbon out of my tops I keep and tied them together to make pretty laces.

ceridwen · 8 May 2010 at 9:07AM

Winchelsea wrote: »

As I posted a couple of days ago, rhubarb leaves are supposed to be a good mordant (fixative) when dyeing clothes with veg dyes, e.g. beetroot, red cabbage, onions etc.

Thanks for that. What is the process one uses to turn those rhubarb leaves into a mordant please?

I'm guessing its a case of grab a good handful of rhubarb leaves/chop up small and boil up with enough water to cover them for, say, 10 minutes. Drain off the water and keep (ie thats the mordant)? Would that sound right?

Once the mordant is made - then how does one actually use it please? Again - I'm guessing - but I assume one would dye the clothes with vegetables to required colour/let them dry and then just swirl them round in say a small trug of mordant (diluted say 10:1 with water). Would that sound right for that?

EDIT: Now googling - and the first thing I found was very vague. The only practical how-to was its 1lb of rhubarb leaves and they have to be simmered for an hour and one must do it outdoors......

cyclingyorkie · 8 May 2010 at 9:07AM

when my DD's were throwing out their exfoliating gloves I grabbed them - they're fantastic for cleaning the bath with!

lauren_1 · 8 May 2010 at 9:45AM

For those who use washable nappies/washable sanitary wear, you can make the pads/liners so much easier and cheaper than what they are sold for, just cut up a fleece blanket in to sanitary towel sized shaped, voila...a nappy liner or panty liner

Cut the same shape from a single layer of towelling, sew to liner.....voila.....booster pad for nappies OR a pad/panty liner

You can make your own wipes too! cut make the above square *the toweling back works best. keep in a watertight pot, i found the tupperwear oyster a ideal size, wet the wipes with mix of cold camomile tea and a tea spoon of baby wash.

Winchelsea · 9 May 2010 at 4:12PM

ceridwen

About the rhubarb leaves as mordant, I don't really know the answer, but your ideas sound good to me.

I was at the Eden Project last spring, and a woman was knitting bunting from lovely shades of wool. When I spoke to her she told me she spins and dyes all her own yarn, using vegetable dyes.

I asked her how she fixed the colours and she told me about rhubarb leaves. She made it sound very simple, i.e. on the lines of "throw them in and see what happens"!

cookie9 · 9 May 2010 at 5:26PM

unixgirluk wrote: »

Here's some ideas I've put into practise recently:-

- using old envelopes for shopping lists
- leaving my oven door open after cooking to help heat the room
- when making 2 cups of tea using 1 tea bag (I like my tea pretty weak anyway)
- if I find tiny holes in t-shirts caused by them snagging on zips on other items of clothing I'll darn them and cover over with beads or sequins and arrange in a pattern (started this using a small bead necklace found at a jumble sale for 10p). This also works for updating clothes too.
- in the colder weather I'll wear my summer vest tops with complimentary coloured long sleeved tops, saves buying lots of clothes and keeps you warm.
- when I snapped the laces on my deck shoes I used the ribbon out of my tops I keep and tied them together to make pretty laces.

Love your ideas - do a few already but also keen to get a few new ideas.

My latest idea is charging my phone at work. Lots of others do it and I do have to use for work although not cheeky enough to charge my i-pod!

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Lots more Sneaky Ways to save the pennies

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