Dyeing Day

Yesterday our gang of four ladies got together at Jean's house for another playday and this time we were dyeing.  Wow!  I've not worked so hard at dyeing for a long time but it was a great fun day.  Sadly, the weather was against us so we mostly had to work inside but there was a break in the rain and Wendy and Tina were able to do some experimenting outside for a while.

When we arrived Jean had set everything up ready for us and it all started out very tidily but we gradually managed to get two rooms looking like a tornado had gone through.  We started by 'exchange' dyeing smallish pieces of fabrics in a series of 8 baths from a gorgeous acid yellow through to French blue.  Tina used a little of each colour to dye some fabric in a tall vase (parfait dyeing).
 

The utility room was set up with lots of dyes for us to play with and a saucepan of logwood natural dye to use too.  I've got some lovely mauves from that that I'll photograph and put on here soon.

We all tried our hand at space dyeing and Tina is going to have some lovely variegated thread.

I had taken along a two metre length of off white/lemony linen that I scrunched up and then painted dyes onto with a foam brush.  The dyes didn't move as much as I thought they would so Tina helped me turn the fabric over and I painted it again from the reverse side.  By today, after batching, the colours had merged so that there is hardly any plain cloth showing and I am currently wiating impatiently for it to dry a bit so I can iron it and see what I've got.  I need it dry for tomorrow as I want to make a top with it.

I shall be interested how Tina's swirly piece above turns out.  The lavender is a very delicate colour.
 

This piece of Wendy's above has been pushed into the rows of a CD holder (from Ikea) so that it should dye in stripes.

The rain eased off just long enough for Wendy to let gravity do its work with this piece of cloth and it looked very dramatic in real life.

The moment of truth for the exchange dyed fabrics and the tricky job of sorting out what belonged to who.  Fortunately we had all marked out fabrics with various scissor cuts (or no cut) in an effort to make the sorting easier.  

As well as the dyeing shown here I also parfait dyed a linen tablecloth that was an unused wedding present from about 40 years ago (am I really that old?!) and a ragged apron that had belonged to my friend Grace's brother and which is looking very exciting today now that the excess dye has been washed out.  Can't wait for that to dry to!

My DH has gallantly helped me with the rinsing out today so now I just have to be patient for a while to see the results.  So far the exchange dyeing is looking subtler than it appeared when taken out of the tubs.  I will be ironing it all later but I won't get any photos posted today as the light is terrible.  Just when I need a drying day outside it's pouring down!  C'est la vie!

Dig the pinny!

Playtime!

You may be aware if you are a friend on Facebook that we've been away again!  This time to beautiful Scotland but I'll come back to that in a future post.

I think it's time I included something creative on here so I'll share with you what we did on our once-a-month play day yesterday.  Four of us have just started getting together to share techniques, ideas and inspirations and so far have explored discharge printing and printing with Inktense bars and pencils.

Using a home made screen (from a picture frame and voile) I laid the screen down onto a sheet of freezer paper (not the waxy side) and sketched with the oilbars keeping the idea of the sea in mind.

When I picked the screen up, as expected, loose colour from the bars had dropped through.  I sprayed these with water to dissolve the pigment and took a direct monoprint.

This is the print on cotton, it is a little stronger in real life.  What I particularly liked was the subtle specks of colour from the waterspray on the edges.

Turning to the silkscreen I pulled the first print onto Evolon with a layer of organza on the top and with a stencil between the screen and the organza.  Initially we used printpaste to pull the print but by the time we had washed that out it left a very pale print.  Evidently the paste puts the pigment into suspension instead of releasing it into the fabric fully.  I decided not to rinse my prints out as these early prints will probably go into my sketchbook for future reference.

This above is the organza print and below is the print on evolon

 If I had taken more time and care I could have masked out the hard outlines but the prints in themselves are exciting.  We were thinking of other ways of getting this effect of colour gradations with printing and couldn't think how else it could be achieved.

Just a belated word of warning, Inktense bars will stain your screen so don't use your best one! 

I made this print over earlier prints that I had made with Dionne Swift. I used a stencil based on the London streetplan by ArtistCellar Stencils.

And of course, I also had the positive print from the map stencil.

As I said earlier I havn't washed my prints out as I would expect to lose too much colour.  Apparently you can use Aloe Gel or even sanitising gel to pull the prints so I will have another try with one of these and see how the colours hold up.  It will be interesting to experiment with other watersoluble media too.

As well as having a play day I have been busy making a baby quilt for a friend who is expecting later this year.

I am really pleased with this quilt and as it is made from a panel it went together relatively quickly.  I added a border to square it up (not that it is very even) and patched together a backing.

The panel is by Hoffman fabrics but I can't remember where I got it from or what it's called.

I've also done a workshop recently and made a sewing roll, although the method could be adapted to a roll for any number of purposes,

Well, that's enough for one post. See you soon!