Oh My Gosh - Suminagashi! -- Day 5 QBL

I learned again today to never ever say you would never do something! After all that is how I started dyeing fabric!! I only took my first class as a filler at a conference where I had to take classes three days to insure getting the instructors I wanted! Then look what happened. It wasn't even a good dyeing class!!

Well, today it was Suminagashi. I have seen it and heard of it and vaguely knew it was done with special inks on water with special implements. Well, what a surprise to find out that all of the above was not true! You just use water, some acrylic paints and a broom straw like testing cake for doneness! And it was really fun and focused!


Today was the last day of class and I was one with my marbling trays today! I actually used the same tray with the same size for going on three days and this morning I had reached bottom and the plastic was beginning to show through! It was a very obedient size and I was very sorry to see it go bye-bye. Not that often you get that kind of loyalty from a tray.


I focused on printing on black cloth today. I cut up a whole bunch figuring I would never use it all. Was I wrong -- I just kept printing and printing and printing and used it all up plus what I had left over of my whites! So I should have lots of fabrics to audition for my Ruth McDowell class. I think some of these last ones will be perfect for my pelican.

Well, all you marblers out there know how often the bottom of your tray is just beautiful and there is just no way to capture the flowing paints. Well, I found a way -- you take a picture of it and then print it on cloth!! This is the bottom of the tray after I dumped it sideways. Isn't it pretty!

This is one of my suminagashi pieces. It was really fun to do and I definitely will do some more when I get home. No mess here!

This is one of my pelican pieces using white, some yellow and brown and a deep blue with the brown.


This is another of the prints on black fabric.

This was the final pull from my loyal tray. When I was cleaning the top, all this bloomed up from the bottom and I decided I had to have a print of it. I first tested with a piece of paper to make sure there really was color up there and there was! Elin called it a picture of intestines!

Another print on black just using a mix of white, brown and some black.

Yet another of the prints for the pelican picture.

This is the last of the prints on black although I did more, they do start to get a bit repetitious.

This was my final print of the day where I just dumped what was left in my little cups onto a still good size. There was gold, red, brown, white, silver and who knows what else. It is a very subtle print, much subtler than the picture would tell you but I loved it!

This was all the flowers that a woman in the class by the name of Nancy Breland did. She actually made a whole board of companion pieces as well!