Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Last Mandala Dyeing of the Season...

I just randomly selected one of the pieces from the pile for the opening!!  I had a few folded pieces of fabric lying around as well as 10 lbs of ice left in the freezer so I literally threw things together -- actually stacked some of the mandalas as I didn't have enough room and it was the thinner batiste fabric that I had.  I was pretty amazed by the results and am showing literally everything in this blog except for the two tshirts I did for my BIL -- I am not real pleased with those and may have to go at them again.  The color was good, just not enough of it!  
 This next bunch including the one above were all the thinner pieces of fabric and I literally squeezed about 10 of them on a 10 inch x 18 inch screen and each one of these is 22 inch square.  These were all the ones that were stacked up on top of each other so a few will look a little similar but since I didn't pay any attention to neatly stacking them, they don't look alike!













Hope I haven't put any duplicates up here!

These next four were my favorites and were done on a sateen that I bought but not as a pfd fabric and hoped for the best.  I was rewarded for my dollars well spent as the color was fantastic as you can see.  Hardly anything washed out when I rinsed them which was surprising as you use so much dye powder in this technique.

These pieces were all done together on one screen and I used yellow, grape, intense blue, a little orange and leaf green.  I think the leaf green and the intense blue got together and created some love turquoise as I didn't use any turquoise!

 I think these last two are my very favorites!  I believe I use some dark green in them as well.
This is the drop cloth (or most of it anyway) that I used under the above four.  I really like places on this and you can see how much color there is.  This is actually a collage of two pictures I took and I think the collage cut off a bit as the piece was square.  So you can see how much color there is even after doing the mandalas.

Just for a change of pace, I have been working on the stitching for those pictures that I had printed on the cloth.  This is the Green Heron which was the smallest as I wanted to just play a bit first.  I used many different colors of thread and just tried to follow the lines of the feathers etc.  You really can't see the stitching unless you stand close up.  Don't know what to do about that!!

This is a closeup where hopefully you can see more of the stitching.  I am working on the Tri-color Heron now who is a little bigger and doesn't have as much detail in the background,  Hopefully I will get all these done in the next week before I leave for my big trip!!

Lots to do as we have had a terrible time with our house in North Carolina.  We were hit by lightening for a second time in four years.  We had a whole house surge protector plus smaller surge protectors and still sustained a ton of damage -- even worse than the last time!  The only good news is that the place didn't burn down.  It knocked out every expensive thing in the place including  refrigerator, garage door opener, at least one of the big air conditioners, the elevator and the new big tv!  Dear husband is heading down this weekend to assess what has to be done.  We had guests there who have been handling repairmen so things are getting fixed as they find them.  I think I am on a first name basis with the air conditioner people now.  We don't have luck with lightning as our first house in NY got hit straight on many years ago knocking out about everything including a deep well pump that provided our water.  The beach house hasn't been hit directly but the pole right next to the house gets hit and the surge flows to us!  I thought only boats were large holes into which you poured money.....





3 comments:

Sandy said...

Sorry to hear about the lightning damage. I hope you manage to recover everything.

I keep thinking you have to do a series about fruit cross sections with some of these pieces you have dyed!
Sandy in the UK

Unknown said...

I have been trying some ice dyeing and colours aren't nearly as bright as yours. Do you use cube or crushed ice? Estimate on how much powdered dye for a fat quarter? Thanks and beautiful work!!
Shelia

Elizabeth said...

I use ice cubes and just a layer deep enough to cover the whole piece. I presoak in soda ash and use wet (dry doesn't work well). I cover the whole thing with a thin layer of powdered dye (using an old salt shaker works well so it isn't too thick). I try not to get complementary colors next to each other. I sometimes wait for all the ice to melt and sometimes just until the ice is clear and then I nuke the pieces for about 4 min/yard. If you are using the blues, this is an important step as they really don't bond without warmth. The kind of fabric you use is important as well -- pfd mercerized works best as it always does. You do use a lot of dye powder and I try to use up some of my very old powders this way. I always wear a dust mask during the stage where I put the powder on.