After one brief, supervised silk scarf dyeing session with a local artist a couple weeks ago, I gave it a whirl tonight in my kitchen with Abby and Amelia. We had two yards of 45-inch wide silk and several packets of Kool-Aid.

I appear to be on a bit of a Kool-Aid dyeing kick. I’m not big on working with toxic chemicals, so I find this to be a great alternative. Tonight’s craft session was 50 percent successful, resulting in one pretty scarf and one not-so-pretty scarf. Ah, well, we still had fun. We’ll see how things look in the morning. Check back for photos of the silk scarves after my column runs next weekend.

Here’s that pillowcase dress I made last week for my most recent craft column. The instructions, available as a pdf download on my newspaper blog, are even more basic than the dress in the picture. I gathered the fabric at the top of the dress and made my own bias tape for the sample, then decided to simplify the instructions at the last minute because sewing gathers and making bias tape can be a bit intimidating for rookies.

Feel free to check it out and e-mail me if your feedback. The instructions I wrote are super basic so feel free to bust out with some fancy embellishments to take it up a notch and maybe donate one to a local charity.