Out from Under the Dome -- Part II

When you live in a land where 1/2 the year is winter, and you find yourself rushed through spring and plopped down in the midst of the hottest summer on record, what to do?

Sun dyeing!  In this case, HOT sun dyeing!

I had several jars of assorted dyes kicking around from last year (I can imagine the active dyers among you cringing) -- some Dylon, some acid dyes (for yarn especially), and some MX dyes (for cotton and linen).  I decided I didn't care about the type of dye; I was simply going to put assorted fabric -- already pre-treated with soda ash -- into large glass jars, pour in dye (even more than one type in a single jar), stick 'em out in the 39 C sunshine for a couple of days, and see what would happen!

I'm pretty sure I've written somewhere how that, while I admire shibori-style dyeing, with folds and clips and knots and such, I don't want to do it.  The closest I've come to it is either wrapping and tying fabric around PVC pipe and then putting it in dye or applying dye with a pipette or whatever.  I prefer the serendipity of "scrunch" dyeing (also known as 'parfait' dyeing) -- where you scrunch prepared fabric into a container, and either pour dye over it as you go -- in layers, like a parfait -- or after it's scrunched into the vessel.

That's pretty much what I did with this fabric.  Two pieces were silk twill.  Another couple were cotton from my "inheritance" fabric (thanks again, Joan!) and there was one light-weight cotton 'scarf' that had been dyed a rather bland beigey pink (is beigey a word?!) in a workshop some years ago.  A 'natural dye' workshop, I think.

Here's how they started out.  The turquoise is the "inherited" cotton; the others are silk twill.  The over-dye piece isn't shown.

Now...here's how they turned out.

The "inherited" white cotton was in a turquoise acid dye, so of course (because it's plant fibre and not animal fibre) it didn't take the colour deeply.  But surprise!  Only after I dyed it did I realize it had an embossed motif (see the circled area)!

The silk twill was treated with random pourings, parfait style, of golden yellow and scarlet acid dyes:

Main colour: golden yellow; 
secondary colour: scarlet

Detail photo!

  

Main colour: scarlet;
hints of golden yellow

Detail photo!

Last but not least, there's the over-dye -- from bland "beigey pink" to..."Everything But the Kitchen Sink"!  😉

I really have no idea what I'm going to do with any of these, but there's gold to be mined in there come winter, with the hopes of the return of art exhibits and sales in my area -- let alone anywhere else!

And yet...there's more.  Stay tuned for Part III, as I link this up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday, too.

Have a great week!

Play-ces

Zip-bag curing

I like dyeing in the summer, because -- even though I do it in my Back Room rather than mainly outdoors -- everything seems so much less messy because I can keep the windows open, including the one on the back screen door, and I can dry the stuff outside on my wee laundry rack.  So...one of the 'play-ces' I've been for the past 10 days is in the Dye Pot zip-bag, with low-water immersion dyeing.  I've put up 3 small batches of fabric, and there's a batch of Former Failures (i.e. over-dyes!) curing as I post.

I deliberately chose no 'recipe' this time out, playing only with Dharma Trading's Golden Yellow, Sky Blue and Scarlet.  From these three I made a variety of greens, red-browns, some definite sky fabric (I live in big-sky country, after all!) and a brown-black that I plopped in wherever it felt right.

Wanna see?

Dyepot 1 - All cotton, all the time

Dyepot 2 - More cotton

Dyepot 3 - Mixin' it up

In the third batch I dug out some different fabrics with which to play.  At the top: a piece of semi-sheer curtaining in white with little white flecks -- definitely some part synthetic something-or-other -- that turned into the neatest blue-flecked textured piece, as the flecks picked up the dye.  Next up, two white pieces.  Huh?  Yep.  Two pieces of definitely synthetic silky stuff that...didn't hold the dye at all.  Third from the top, my very favourite piece of the batch -- a piece of white cotton velveteen dyed plummy-brown (close up, below).  Then a tiny piece of something labelled 'brocade' that was originally cream-coloured, and a remnant of cheesecloth/scrim that I painted with a pipette -- red and yellow -- and then plunked in a bag to cure.  Last but not least, a wonderful piece of cheesecloth that's going to shred beautifully.  It's my second-favourite of the batch.  As my friend arlee would say, "Yumpth!"

My two faves, close up:

Cotton Velveteen

Cheesecloth

The second 'play-ce' I've been is out in the back yard, with a small experiment in sun printing. Margie Davidson is a member of SAQA Western Canada,as am I. I admire her work so very much that I hesitate to refer to her as a colleague; not yet anyway -- I'm just not there! Anyway, Margie does the most amazing sun-printing of leaves, and I decided I had to figure out how to do it -- how to work with them out in the open air where (at least here) the wind can stymie one's best efforts.  Sure enough, yesterday was perfectly sunny, but by the time I got the fabric prepped and the leaves gathered, a definite breeze had come up. I coped by using fine glass-head pins to tack down the leaves and feathers in my experiment, and was pleasantly surprised by the results.

Feather Print

Fern

Flowering Crab 

And simply because I had to add a little 'weight' into the mix....

Metal washers...or whatever they're called

While this dye-stuff has been curing, I've been keeping at it in the studio.  I finished another CQ block -- with TAST stitch-of-the-week #20, the Dreaded Bullion Knot.  Yes -- I managed to get the hang of it and discovered this:  it's much easier and more fun to make a DBK with wool than with cotton floss.  Heaven forbid I'd try it in silk!

Look closely -- there are some Bullion Knots in there.  My favourite part of this block, though, is the tie (used both right-side-up and inside-out) and finding embellishments to add to the seams so I wouldn't have to do too many of those knots!

I've also continued my sampling for All the Streets End in Trees, which is still in mock-up on my design wall.  I'm trying to create a lacy effect with the leaves.  I began by knitting a swatch of 1/4" fabric strips, and then made a sample of bits-and-bobs bonded by stitching using water-soluble stabilizer.  I combined one sheet of water-soluble Sulky Paper Solvy (r), and a piece of Inspira WaterWorks Soluble Film (I got this on a roll -- 8 inches wide by 10 yards long; can't remember where -- probably at a quilt show merchant's booth, and I can't find an independent website for Inspira products...).  The paper enabled me to draw out a rough 'leafy' sketch over which to place my materials and stitch; however, it didn't make for as sheer a result as I'd like.  At least, I think there was paper trapped in the stitching to make the sample more opaque than I wanted.  So...now I need to go back and make a sample using two pieces of the soluble film instead.  I'm also going to change up the colour of the hand-stitched yarn/floss.  See what I mean here:

On the left is the knit sample -- garter stitch, with live stitches still resting on a strand of red waste yarn -- and on the right, the stabilizer-stitched sample, a combination of machine and hand stitching a la Beaney and Littlejohn, whose DVD, "In Action", is a must have! (It's expensive, but I got it at the Central Alberta Quilt Show last month from our favourite show vendor, Copperfield's Books of Winnepeg. They always carry a wide selection of books, CDs and DVDs for textile artists of all genres, at discounted 'show special' prices.  Who can resist?)

And...today?  It's been cool, rainy and windy -- a perfect day to try 'light printing' (like sun printing but using my south-facing work room window, overhead light, and my daylight lamp), to catch up on this blog, to do some handwork in front of a DVD, and some spinning...Away I go.

     

More Adventures in Dyeing

It's been a week for colour.  Monday and again yesterday, I worked with fibre-reactive dyes to create a palette of coloured fabric.  (This is the first activity in Module 3 of my Level 2 C&G Creative Techniques: Quilting program.)

I began by making 'pure' colours; that is, colours for which I had dye powder, mixed straight with water.  These gave me my primaries (red, yellow and blue) and a few seondaries (fuschia, golden yellow and turquoise).

Reds and Yellows

Blues

Next, I worked on a purple, and came up with a plum (of sorts:

A Pleasing Plum

I wasn't too happy with the scarlet; I'd been a bit parsimonious, putting 2 pieces of fabric in one dye bath bag, and it didn't distribute well, despite my squeezing, nor did it give me the depth of colour I wanted.  So...Wednesday I made some more scarlet, along with a very pretty green.  I used small pieces for the latter, as a little of this colour goes a long way!

Last -- but not least -- I've made a couple of pieces of a beautiful royal purple (not photographed), and used my red-orange dye mixture in my first snow dyeing efforts.  You can see it in the uppler left corner.  

As for the second go at snow dyeing, well!  Much better when you don't get carried away with too many colours (see above -- the muddy bits)!  I created two pieces in blues and greens, and two in reds with a bit of purple.  Here's a sample, one of each:

You never know what to expect with this technique, and that's what makes it so much fun (aside from the fact that it's easy to do, and there's more than enough snow around here to work with!)

Next up: creating a colour wheel.  

The Fall Classes are Up

at Joggles!.. And this is the one with which I'm smitten. I've collected some grand sheers over time, and yes, have used them to cover post-cards or to alter the background of a piece, but this class will inspire and instruct me on different, more multi-dimensional uses of sheer fabric. Nowadays, this is what I look for in a class -- something to stretch me beyond what I already know/do.

Whatever your taste, though, there's a grand selection in the fall line-up, including several dolls, and some particularly useful opportunities to develop thread and/or silk ribbon embroidery and dyeing skills. Enjoy!