A Day of Dye Painting

Dianne hosted a day of dye painting with me and Becky on Sunday.  These are Dianne's pieces.  She grumbled in the morning and wasn't sure she liked the whole process but I think her pieces speak for how successful she was!!

We basically were working with dry soda ashed fabric and very thickened, very intense colors.  Instead of making the powders into a liquid, I mixed the dye powders directly into the print paste.  Because there is so much urea in the print paste, it was a cinch.  I then did a brief talk on how to work with these.  Basically if  you want still thick dye but a lighter shade, you just add more print paste to what you have spooned into a separate little cup (we used old cat food plastic cups).  If you want a thinner "paint", you just add water.  As you can see, when you use the intense dyes with a lot of thickener immediately take on the fabric, don't move even when you add additional watered down dyes later.

These  next four pieces were done by Becky.

She microwaved her pieces but nuked this one too long and actually burned it which are those dark spots.  It didn't flame up until she opened the microwave!

The next few pieces are mine and are not particularly good although I like this one and the next one okay.  I was really trying to illustrate what you could do with these dye paints rather than concentrating on creating good pieces.  In this piece, I did very dark crosses, then added print paste and got lighter crosses, and did this a couple of more times.  Then I watered down the dyes and painted the whole piece over the crossed images.  This fabric was not white but was a light blue to begin with.

I used a silk screen I had created to first stamp with very thick dyes and then I watered it down and painted over the whole piece.

This was also a colored piece of fabric to begin with and probably not even pfd!!  I picked up wet dyes that had bubbled on the plastic, then painted some crosses and then painted on wet dyes over the whole piece in a couple of different colors.  It was very wet.

I used household sponges to sponge different colors down on a piece of green fabric (very light green).  I probably shouldn't have added the red last!!  Lots of texture though.  I hate any white spaces on my pieces -- always have so avoid that at all costs!

This was one of my "failure" mandalas that I cut in four and then pieced back together with the pieces formerly on the outside now on the inside!!  I also trimmed off about an inch all the way around.  I thought the newly painted fabric might make good borders around it.  The green one actually looks better than in this picture for some reason!  

I don't know why I feel compelled to take the mandalas that I count as failures and work on them first instead of the ones I like!!  Guess it is the challenge to make something that I like out of something I don't care for!!

End of Baby Quilts and New Projects

This is all the completed blocks up on my design wall for the disappearing 4 patch baby quilt.  It's a little random as I only used leftovers from the previous projects.

Of course, I went to sleep before I did anymore and decided I would like to expand the size by putting it on point.  Seemed liked it would work and I needed it to be at least 40 inches wide which it wasn't.  I didn't want to make another row of blocks.

Here was my first test and figured it was a go but I did have to make a few more blocks but not as much as I would have with the other orientation.

Well, I got it finished after having to rip out some blocks (of course the same ones) a couple of times.  I am a bit compulsive in some ways!

It's not great but it is okay and the backing is bright and cheerful for both of these.  I even pieced the batting from many random pieces that I have saved.  I am going to keep doing this as it is easy and will get rid of a lot of fluffy random stuff!

Of course I found another bag filled with these 4 1/2 inch by 6 1/2 inch pieces cut from some fabric I had painted and dye painted years ago.  I think I was going to do postcards with these as we had a postcard project at one time in RAFA -- a LONG time ago.  These really appealed to me just sitting against the white design wall.  I had some more of the fabric in the bag so cut as many more pieces as I could of the same size.

This  is most of the pieces.  I ended up with 21 altogether and I really liked them.

I decided I would construct a series of small pieces with a few of the blocks in each one.  I tried surrounding each piece with a small rim of black and that didn't work at all.  I added a 2 3/4 inch border around and between the pieces.  This one was the vertical presentation.  I really sorted through the blocks and did a lot of auditioning to get what I thought was a pleasing arrangement.

I think the black will make a nice frame for the piece though.  I haven't even sewn all the white strips on yet.  I wanted you to have to get close enough to really see the blocks which is why I didn't put all the blocks in one piece.

This is a second set which I will set horizontally.  I still have enough blocks to make at least one if not two more pieces.

Of course, this all has really inspired me to start painting fabric again, something I haven't done in awhile.  Some of these blocks are painted with thickened MX dyes and some with acrylic paints.  It is hard to tell them apart!.  

Painting with Thickened Dyes (Dye Painting)

My dyes are almost a week old but still seem to be producing excellent results. I suspect this is because my basement is cool(er) and because I make dye concentrates at 10% (less water with which to bond ). The last pretreated yardage is in the dryer awaiting the results of yesterday's dye painting. I decided just to take some of the remaining dyes, thicken them and roll and sponge them directly onto the cloth rather than monoprinting. I figured this was a safer approach to insure some color as the dyes should be a lot weaker now after a week.

This is a closeup of the first piece. This was literally done with the colors I had left. First I sponged on blues and greens all over and then sponged on a little golden yellow in empty spaces and then sponged on the mixing red mixed with a little strong orange.

I just directly rollered on colors onto the piece of twill - red on one side of the roller and golden yellow on the other side. It of course made a lot of orange in the middle. Then I outlined some of the shapes with mixing blue. I can't believe how strong these dyes still are -- they are a week old and were only 5% to begin with.

This is of course a closeup of the previous one.

Dye Painting and Monoprinting Tips

1. Use a high concentration of dye to urea water (always use urea water when painting or printing with dyes). I use a 10% solution which is about 2 tbsps./cup of urea water.

2. Make up your dyes a couple of hours before you need them -- yellow especially doesn't want to stay in solution so just keep adding urea powder and stirring before using.

3. Make up your print past the night before -- very thick which is 5 1/2 tbsps/cup of urea water. Put the powder in first and then add the water while stirring. It will be cloudy at first but will thicken and become translucent.

4. Presoak your scoured fabric in soda ash solution for at least 15 minutes and let dry the day before. Cut into the size pieces with which you want to work.

5. A very thick print dye paint can be made with equal parts of print paste and the dye. This will give you then a 5% concentration which is a dark shade of the color. If you want to thin down a little more, use either more dye (darker color) or a little urea water (lighter color).

6. Play with all different concentrations of dye to print paste. You can get it pretty thin before it starts seeping around to the other colors.

7. If you decide to paint with just dyes (no thickener), put another piece of cloth or fleece underneath so you don't get the plastic bubbly effect (unless you want that). Don't soak it too thoroughly or you will force all the soda ash out of the fabric.

8. WHEN YOU ARE PAINTING, PUT ONLY ENOUGH THICKENED DYES THAT YOU WILL USE IN THE NEXT 15 MINUTES INTO ANOTHER CONTAINER. USE ONLY THAT CONTAINER TO DIP YOUR PAINTBRUSH, ROLLER, SPONGE. THE REASON FOR THIS IS THAT SOME SODA ASH WILL TRANSFER BACK TO YOUR APPLICATOR WHILE YOU ARE PAINTING AND THUS MAKE THE DYES VERY REACTIVE WITH A SHORT LIFE (MAYBE AN HOUR). Probably the only exception to this is if you are using very tiny brushes and thus very little transfer back.

9. Cover with a plastic bag loosely. If your dyes are very liquid, expect to see some movement of color. If they are pretty stiff from print paste, they will stay put and there will be no bleeding.

My process now is to let the fabrics batch for about 4 hours and then to roll them up in the plastic I was covering them with. I then fold the bundle and put in my old microwave over for about 4 min/yard, checking a couple of times. This insures that maximum dye has reacted with fiber. Even though these are called cold water dyes, they are even more highly reactive at hotter temps (as long as you don't have too much water). For silk I would use a lot less time and check more frequently. All microwaves are a little different. Mine is an old clunker without even a turntable but it is big.