The End of Marbling for Awhile

Well, finally have cleaned up the area, gotten rid of the remnants of size and retrieved all my efforts.

I have forgotten how difficult it is to get what you want.  The high humidity when I was doing these didn't help as it was difficult to accurately dip the quarter yard pieces -- a problem I haven't had before.  This was was pretty good.

I kind of liked this one also.

I can retrieve fairly large areas of this one and I liked the colors.

The purple looked faded but if cut up, I am sure this will be okay.

I liked several of the second pulls I did.  I define this term as laying a second piece of fabric down after you have just marbled one piece.  You don't add any more paint, just take what is leftover.  I did this one on an already dyed piece of fabric.

I am leaving my paints and supplies here as this is something I can do easily at the beach.  Maybe next year I will have better luck!

Getting Back on the Marbling Wagon - Learning All Over Again

Well, this was step one in learning all over again.  Lesson is that after  you have left the size to sit all night, you should always always clean the top with newspapers as there is dust and stuff you can't see with the naked eye!!  If you don't do this, you get this -- all those white spots are the remnants.

Here I used the black which is opaque early on.  I really really don't like all those speck looking things so won't do that again and will stick with the maxim of only using the opaque paints near the end of my marbling.

This still has some white spots but I like it anyway.

Again, some white spots but okay as the colors were light.  We will pretend I intended that.

The lighter spots here were operator error in putting the fabric on the size.  The humidity down here makes the fabric less stiff than at home so I have had to improvise.  At first I used skirt hangers but I have been trying to just lay it on the size resting one edge of the fabric on the far side of the tray and then laying the fabric down evenly -- sometimes more successfully than others!

Parts of this are okay.

Again, parts of this are okay.  I think when drying this bunch of fabric some of the alum rubbed off when I laid it over the drying rack.  The lesson here was to hang by the edge with a clothespin rather than hanging it over the rack to dry.

I took a bunch of hand dyed fat quarters and marbled some of these.  This was okay.  The  yellow was pretty strong and of course the paints are transparent in nature.

Probably one of my favorites so far.

Again, parts are okay but some operator error again!!

This was a second pull.  I liked it even though I have no good way of getting rid of the bubbles.

Marbling With a Friend

Lucky for me, Patricia Mattison (Pat's website) invited me over to her house yesterday to do some marbling and/or dyeing!!  Of course I have none of the stuff I need to do that down here but figured I could add some knowledge to the endeavors.  The first order of business was to see in person all of Pat's beautiful quilts.  Unfortunately I didn't get all the names of the quilts!!  This was one of the latest which was shown at Houston!  It has layers and layers of fabrics and is quite large.  The rectangular box on the bottom was a printer part in front of the quilt so it is not part of the design!!

This is one of her first quilts and is called Perseid Meteor Shower.  I loved it!!

This was a very large mermaid!  You can see the attention to the detail in the faces which is absolutely amazing.  

This is called Morgan (which is her daughter).  Pat sells her works in a gallery in downtown Wilmington, NC

.
This was one of several stretched pieces featuring some of her surface designs.  The background here is a piece of fabric from Judy Robertson but the shibori pieces on top are Pat's and go so perfectly.

This is another of her stretched pieces of surface design featuring one of her signature dragonflies.

I see these bushes with the red berries but have no idea what they are.  This one was growing by the side of Pat's house and looked beautiful with all the changing leaves and the green.

Now, I have to say that there is nothing more fun than doing marbling with a friend!!  It just makes the whole process so much more light-hearted somehow.  Of course, bossy me had lots of opinions and freely shared those!!  Pat and her daughter Morgan were doing most of the paint dripping but I joined in as it is a fun task.  Her set up was just right, the paints behaved and expanded nicely on top!  Pat had found many of the same paints that I like to use (Golden paints specifically which are the highest pigment acrylic paints you can buy).  She even had an ample supply of GAC900 (fabric extender) from Golden.  Pat and I had taken the same class from Elin Noble but I didn't remember that I learned about GAC900 from Elin as she didn't use the Golden paints in the class I took.  It made life very easy though.  Pat had set up a long table and made a frame with pool noodles and plastic and filled it with about 15 gallons of Methylcellulose - long enough to do four foot scarves easily!!   You can see Pat and Morgan laying down one of the first scarves in this new batch.

Here isMorgan with  one of the resulting scarves.  She  uses very light silk chiffon for many of her scarves.  After marbling, they are rinsed in a bucket of clean water.  They are then hung out on a line to dry.  I generally wait about a week after that to throw them in a washing machine and get out that last bit of size (methylcellulose).

This was one of my favorites.  It had already been marbled once with a brown and some oranges.  We over-marbled with all sorts of "warm" colors and I loved the result.  I think this was on bamboo or rayon rather than silk.  It has a very complex look about it!

I have ordered up some alum online and will do some marbling of my own next week.  Pat is definitely a bad influence as she recognized as I should be using up the box of marbled fabrics I brought down here rather than making more!!

Pat teaches classes in her fabric collage techniques as well as gives lectures  (Pat's Workshops).

It is good to have a "play" mate down here as I miss my many days with Marcia and Priscilla!!

Ugliest of the Uglies Update

Well have been slowly stepping away from my marbling size and doing other things the past few days! I still have some definitely throwaway fabric that I am experimenting with. Some are coming out better than others! There are some that even marbling can't save!! It is a good lesson in making "complex" cloth though as I try to do some matching of the overpattern with the patterned fabric that it is covering so that it becomes more interesting. Many of these pieces were literally practice and test pieces in various Elin Noble and Ann Johnston workships -- trying multiple techniques on one piece of cloth with the intention of never using it! Some I had tried to retrieve by overdyeing but to no avail!

Today was an adventure driving down back country roads trying to find a quick way to get to the new Quilting By The Lake Location slightly west of Syracuse. It will be quicker than Morrisville -- have to make my reservations to do on the tours the next two Thursdays!

Anyway, these were the four best from today. The first one above had kind of a pattern of needlepoint canvas in the middle and was the ugliest color of purple/green. That is my favorite from today's bunch.

This was the ugliest to start with. It had the black squiggly lines and a lot of black dots of dye all over it with some disgusting muddy colors. It isn't great but it most definitely improved and I think the curvy lines of the marbling really complement the black squiggles.




This was an attempted stripe over miscelaneous dyed rectangles all done with various types of stamps. Each stamp was somewhat interesting but nothing went together as it was totally a try of different techniques. It is a little better but could have used a darker marble.

This was whites and browns and yellows on black fabric. I feel like I can never go wrong doing anything over the black fabric. This is a pretty closely woven broadcloth and does take the marble extremely well. I have found these pieces to be extremely useful in making my birds.

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah Marbling....

Up from the bottom again! You will notice that all of the fabrics I have taken pictures of have not been washed or ironed yet which is why you sometimes see an occasional fold. I dunk the fabric 3 or 4 times after I do the marbling and then hang the remaining sticky wet fabric out on the line where it will dry (if it doesn't rain in the meantime which it has pretty consistently the past couple of weeks). It doesn't matter at this point if a little rain gets on it as the paints are pretty well adhered except if you brush with your hand or fingernail. I then let them dry for a couple of weeks and then wash in the very very gentlest cycle of my washer. I make sure they have no folds when I put them in the washer. I then take them out and they are pretty damp still as the slowest cycle has a relatively slow spin speed (I have a top loader). I then hang them out on the line to dry (NEVER use a dryer as it will just beat them up) and then iron and put away. I have been grouping them and rolling them rather than fold them -- just think of a painted surface and what care you would want to take with it. You just don't want it beaten or rubbed in one place excessively.

This was an orange and green piece that I focused adding the purple onto breaking up the orange space. Looks like a big spiral to me.
I ran out of alum-ed white fabric yet again and the weather has not been cooperating at all so I am back to using up the colored fabrics that I had treated last week. The next two were done on black. I used a lot of the titanium white mixed in with the colors. The light grey areas were white if you looked at the size. Titanium white is really not an opaque but has qualities of an opaque when concentrated.

This was on the black but with the push and pull technique as I wanted to create some fabric that looked a bit like tree bark always useful when doing nature fabric!!

Ah, my last piece of white fabric!

I didn't do much today as I was mesmerized by the funeral of Michael Jackson. I am certainly not the demographic that you would think would be a fan, but I have loved the tv coverage of him when he was in his prime when "I discovered" what a talent he was after watching the Thriller special and the Motown Anniversary special back in the 80's.

June's Jumping!

The next few days will be spent working at the Genesee Valley Quilt Club's quilt show which is the biggest ever this year with over 700 quilts and 40 vendors. It will be held at the Rochester Institute of Technology and will be air conditioned. We have lectures and classes as well as quilts from some of the best in the country (several of our quilters have been well represented at Paducah and Houston). I have entered seven including three full sized quilts and four art quilts. So if you have nothing to do on Friday night, all day Saturday or Sunday, head on down to Rochester for this magnificent show. RIT is very close to the NY Thruway exit in Henrietta.

In them meantime, my marbling bath has been calling again! This time I had a pile of real dye dogs -- these were horrible pieces that I had tried to fix, made worse, discharged and then dyed again in some cases. Also included were pieces using cruddy Joann's stuff from my early days of dyeing when I was trying to dye purples. These are all stuffed in a Rubbermaid tote in my basement, never to see the light of day. I decided to see what alum-ing and marbling would do for them as I had nothing to lose at this point.

This was an overmarble on an old piece of fuchsia/purple/blue fabric from Joanns. It obviously had weaving flaws but the marbling covers all that up as it is more forgiving than the dyeing!

This is another of about the same color as above. I used lots of blues in the marbling bath and only a little of the original purples shows through.

This is the marbled side of a dog dye from awhile ago. It looks better in person for some reason.

This is the reverse of the above piece so you can see what it originally looked like -- this is the before picture basically.

Another of the purples overmarbled.

Just switching gears to move toward purples and reds. This was done on white fabric.

See, I switched!

An interesting one, I thought.

Just playing here as the "flowered" ones I did before worked so well on my jacket.

This is a technique called ebru which is most widely practiced in Turkey. My background is a little more colorful than theirs as theirs tend to be monochromatic and as always, I put lots of color on.

Last Marbling for a Bit

Well back to some color today after doing a few more in the neutrals. I am about ready to refresh all the colors but won't be doing that until later this week. Time to make an orange jacket out of some old marbled fabric!

Always my favorite palette -- some blues, lavenders and then a little turquoise thrown in for good luck!

Back to brown swirls using my new needlepoint canvas "comb"!

Some fun with positioning the browns to try to make a little composition.

Brown stones!

Despite What Martha Stewart Says, It is Called Marbling, not Marblelizing!!

Well, sleep was interrupted by the sound of a critter somewhere in the walls of my house. Banging on the walls at 5 in the morning at least moved it to where I couldn't hear it scratching anymore. Warren will get to deal with that when he gets home -- just hope it isn't squirrels!

I worked the size right down to the bottom of the pan which makes cleanup a lot easier! Hardly any stuff to get rid of and proved to myself that as long there is size, there is a print and you can get really clean prints despite a very dirty looking size. The secret is definitely and for sure changing the rinsing water much, much more frequently than I did before! I am thinking that maybe a window screen would be even better and then I would gently pour some water over the print unfolded. As the print is wider than the bucket, some folding is inevitable. Things are looking pretty clean though! I am amazed at how the paints will stretch all out and then will contract even without adding other paints. Some of the paints that are stronger and already there will take over ownership once again. It is time to make some more size tonight. I have another six yards of fabric ready to be marbled.

You can see I am moving back to more color again with the neutrals as the backdrop. I only have one blue and one yellow that I have added though.

This is far, far too much fun -- too bad my hands can't stay cleaner -- my barrier cream will be here hopefully next week and that will make cleanup a lot easier!


Still more color.

My first print of the day today and sticking with the neutrals.