I'm Losing My Marbles

Okay, that was actually a bad pun but the weather continues to be uncooperative and I got rained on again -- unfortunately after I hung out the alum-ed fabric (it was nice and sunny). So I am almost out of alum yet again so will have to find a new source as I can't seem to get it in quantity locally (I have yet to try one more place).

Aha! I found out a source of alum also called aluminum sulphate. Now you can buy it in the spice section of your supermarket for 2 ounces for $3 or $4 (which would be enough to soak about one yard of fabric) or you can buy it from a dye supplier for about $3/lb plus shipping (not too bad but the dye supplier I use was out of it for awhile) or you can buy it from your garden supply store!! I knew there had to be another source -- 4 lbs for $7 -- it is the chemical that you use to make hydrangea blue and also for other acid loving plants! I have yet to try it and it seems a little bigger granules but it should work. Of course it is something you put on plants in the spring time so not a lot of it around but I did find it. I still want to try one of the Mennonite owned bulk food stores as there is lots of pickling done in the late summer and fall and it is also used for making the pickles crispy!

So I have soaked about 15 yards of fabric now which will translate into about 60 pieces which is about all I can do in 4 or 5 days. It is not a good idea to leave the alum on the fabric for too long. One of the by-products of dissolving alum in water is a mild solution of sulfuric acid -- not too good on fabrics if you remember college chem classes!

Today, I am updating the experiment yet again and think I have hit upon something and the variation was also mentioned on the Marbling list (great minds). I mixed up some plain acrylic extender with water as that will keep the paints more separate (it should act like another paint). That was not totally successful (probably would be if I added some surfactant but not ready to do that yet with this nice clean size) so I added some pearlescent white instead -- now that worked just fine and I like the print that I got. It is more open and brighter so we shall see -- as soon as I get more fabric prepared. The Marbling list person just suggested using a little surfactant greatly diluted to keep the paints separate (ala Suminigashi) but I really try to keep surfactant out of the equation as long as possible as that just trashes the tray too quickly.

I am liking my new experiments. I have just been using up the colors that I have mixed over the past few days and just playing.



I decided to try to just take a piece of foam sheet which was very wobbly and just stroke it back and forth across the paints to see what happened. Kind of like it!


This is specifically for my bird of paradise piece when I get started on it. All these fabrics have to sit for a couple of weeks before I can really wash them.

October RAFA Meeting!

This is Donna showing her new doll that she made -- it was charming! She also had a very large pile of hand dyed fabrics -- I think we have a convert!!

Well, it took me away from my marbling but that was okay as it was most enjoyable! We are going to be doing another exhibit at the Rochester Area Council for the Arts in January where I will show the pelican piece. We turned in our pieces for the Old Forge show as well which is coming up very soon. We had lots of show and tell especially exhibiting what people did in the Cynthia Corbin class many took in September while I was at the Ruth McDowell workshop.

I did get to show off my pelican and my marbled fabrics which a few people were interested in! Some even went through the whole pile of 50 pieces!!

In the meantime, I am awaiting the weather improving so I can hang out some more fabric to dry after applying the alum.


This is Marcia happily showing her piece that she started in the Cynthia Corbin (CC) class.
This is a new member, Margaret Reek, who is showing a very interesting landscape with lots of texture. It happens to be of St. Mary's lake at Glacier. It was very cloudy the day I saw that particular view with the island!


This is Sarah showing what she did with some of her marbled fabric! She loves the marbling too so we chatted a lot!
This is Val's piece from the CC class.

This is Barb's piece from the Rosalie Dace class earlier this year.


This is Barb's CC piece.

This is one of Charmaine's CC pieces -- very cool.
These next two are Charmaine's as a result of the Rosalie Dace class. They are two of four to be developed.

More from the Mad Marbler

More marbling but what did you expect! I am running out of prepared fabric again so will have to do some more prep and the weather has not been cooperating at all and hanging any kind of yardage in the basement is really not an option (although if I can get it partially dry outside, it is okay).

Anyway, more of the same but I started moving toward the browns and a couple of the pieces look really yucky which isn't too much of a surprise. I did dump in a bunch more fresh methylcel as well as it was getting low again. Still haven't used any surfactant and have relied on using the more aggressive paints to perk up the less aggressive ones. Have gotten some great second strikes from the same size so that has been fun. Also played with modifying my compression style a little bit today and really liked the results although the color was a little muddy -- the theory seemed to work!

You can see the muddied up prints in these next two but there are retrievable portions and they are much easier to cut up!




These next two were second prints taken from the same size as the muddier prints and I like what is going on here. Double click on the image to see more detail.

Manic Material Marbling or Taking Textiles to Textured Treasures

These first two pieces are traditional stone patterns just whisking down layers of color. They both have a look of background to me with water or sky and trees. The first looks like water lillies from a distance (at least to me).

Ya gotta double click on these to see the detail and they aren't even ironed yet!




Well, fabric all ironed and ready to go for another day of marbling and experimenting. Of course, the first experiments were dead wrong but you often learn more from those than the ones that work. So the first couple of pieces are so-so, but oh so easy to cut up! For the past week or so, I have been concentrating on the compression technique for getting good organic looking pieces with lots of color. The compression technique I have been using is to take a piece of foam board the width of the tray (so you can fit it inside) and drag it across the size carefully starting at one edge. If it skips a bit, that just makes it more interesting. No rocket science here. I have also used a small piece of balsa wood as well.

So what I found out today was:


(1) you can get more color on top of the size by using the whisks than with the eye dropper no matter how careful you are,


(2) the more color the better for the compression technique as part of the fun is the blooming up of colors that had dropped to the bottom when squeezed out by the more aggressive later paints. When they are still attached by that thin thread, the colors will follow the thread up to the top again and you get great organic patterns.


(3) don't stroke across the colors more than once as mud ensues pretty quickly.


(4) make sure you have a good variety of values.


(5) if you have a surface that looks icky because of some of the colors dropping and being mishapen, you have the perfect surface for using the compression technique.


(6) if you have managed to get a lot of color on top of the size and you have used the compression technique, you can usually get at least two prints -- even got three from one. The prints look nothing alike!


These two prints were the first and second taken from one tray without adding any color in between.





These two were also the result of taking two prints from the same tray without doing anything in between. Notice the second has a lot more red which has more room to spread now that the first print took up most of the blue and green.

Must Marble More

Just can't help myself -- every time I go downstairs to the basement to get something out of the freezer, I wander by the marbling set up!

Well, marbling is on hold for a day or so while my alum-ed fabric dries on the line (hopefully before it rains yet again). There was about a 1/4 of an inch left in the tray this morning, very mucky indeed. I was getting ready to dump it and as I tilted the tray, all sorts of stuff bloomed up from the bottom and I took a number of prints until it got too mixed to get any color separation merely dark green muck. I only had some pieces of yellow fabric lying around so used that and got some interesting prints. They are only good on part of the fabric but nice texture for what is there. I almost like these ones that bloom from the bottom the best as they are so very organic!

Because I have reached the state where I can't find things, it was time to do some picking up in my basement dye area! My biggest surprise was finding 5 lbs of methyl cellulose that I must have bought years ago when I was marbling in a more traditional way. It must have been a lot cheaper back then than it is now! I also found a pound of carageenan which is even more expensive these days! Wow -- who would have thought this stuff would have been an investment (the only ones I have these days that are increasing in value). So marbling will continue unabated!!

This is one of the prints that I took from the stuff that bloomed up from the bottom of the tray when I shifted it.
This was the first of the prints that I took from shifting the tray. You can see more separation and bright colors in this. The background fabric was a pale yellow but kind of got dyed almost a neutral because of the strong muck of the size at this point.




The pelican is progressing although a mini-disaster last night when I managed to transfer some red paint to the white area of the pelican -- wouldn't you know it would be the very small white area!! Haven't decided what to do yet to fix it, but it will be fixed!

Another Day of Obsessive Marbling!

Well, don't know whether it is the phase of the moon or the humidity or magic but as bad as the size has been the last couple of days, today is a whole different story!!! I have done four prints already and haven't added even one drop of surfactant! I even did a double print from one surface and the second is DARKER than anything I did two days ago and of course totally different from the first taken from the same bath. I finally decided to go back to my "roots". I may waste a little more size in the short term but will save in the long run I think.

So, instead of pulling the size off the fabric I have just printed, I am moving it directly into the water after letting it drip just a bit on its own. I also have all the paints and the size at the same temp (doesn't seem to matter what the temp is as long as all are the same it seems). I suspect the latter is what caused some of my problems before. I read up extensively on the net about surface tension, temperature, viscosity and the interrelationships of all of these and I think there is more unknown than known. However, for specific mediums, there are relationships between two of the three, it seems to depend on the medium so we are back to being unscientific but trying our best to control some of the variables!

Because the weather is so nasty today (typical fall day of rain and gloom), I am resorting to hanging my pieces on lines in the basement! I do have to figure out a way to do this while sitting. I have my tables up on risers for dyeing and really need that at a lower level if I want to sit. I know I will be more productive then. Now, I work for about an hour and then go sit for a few minutes before I am driven to go back down and work some more!

I think this one will make good leaves for my Bird of Paradise!


This is actually the second print from one of the baths -- can't remember from which piece now!
This was my very first print today and I knew things were going to go better. Double click to see the detail. I started with a fuchsia that was the remainder in an old Createx bottle. Must remember to get some more. The colors were much more predictable today. I probably did a dozen 1/4 prints and am down to only 2 1/4 pieces left so will be washing and doing the alum bath again. I am having sooooo much fun!

Gourdgeous Day at Marcia's!

Above are many of the incredible gourds that Marcia and Bill have stashed around their house! The last one above is one of several that are hanging from the rafters in Marcia's fabulous studio! They remind me and Marcia also of Yellowstone so that probably explains my obsession with them as I still have not recovered from visiting that wonderful park. You can see the bountiful selection from which I got to pick in the last picture. I filled up a basket trying to get one of each of the various kinds. Bill and Marcia kept most of the ones we dubbed the "candle" gourds as they looked like a burning candle with the wax dripping down the side. For those of you who have not visited Yellowstone, so many places had that kind of configuration as well. White calcium carbonate (from geologic times when Yellowstone was at the bottom of shell/mollusk enriched sea - calcium carbonate is all that remains of those shells) laden springs covering greenery with the multi-colored bacteria providing the pastels.

I got to visit the gardens and spotted this beautiful flower called a Japanese anenome.



I loved this ornamental grass which was one of many displayed in Marcia and Bill's beautiful gardens.
This was a flower called statice which I had heard of and had seen but not growing in a garden! It caught my eye and of course lovely Marcia gifted me with a whole bouquet of all the different colors she had growing the last couple of years. I will have some in my garden next year.


This is my beautiful bouquet of statice which will grace the kitchen table this winter!
This is my basket of gourds that I got to take home for display! There are some of each variety! Don't they just look like a quilt should be made out of them -- the textures and colors......

I did manage to get my pelican quilt basted amid all the chatter and ooohing and ahhing over things. I even managed to get all my tick marks done for my next Ruth McDowell inspired quilt -- the Birds of Paradise. This will be curve pieced but first I want to get the pelican quilt to the sewing machine!!