Dyeing Day - Before

All the miscellaneous stuff that is "fit" to dye is going to be the fodder for yet some new experiments. Some time back, I published directions on how I do "double" dyeing in a "low water immersion (lwi)" gradation. It kind of duplicates the rows and columns in Carol Soderlund's dyeing book but without all the measuring! It basically gives you a gradation from one color to another by holding one color constant and doing a gradation of the second color.

My new experiment will be to try to do this on one piece of cloth instead of the individual pieces of yardage. I am going to start with a four yard piece (about 400 gms) and will put out instructions if it comes out okay. My first attempts will be moving from the yellows to the reds with hopefully some interesting oranges in between. This will all come in handy for my lily piece which requires a lot of shading. We shall see how this all works! My goal is always to simplify measuring and still get okay results. The first one above is the move from sun yellow to fuchsia. I used a constant 3% dye to weight of goods for the sun yellow (ProChem's name) and started with a strongest of 3% of the fuchsia with 8 gradations so it would be 3%, 1.5%, .75%, .40%, .20%, .10%, .05 and .02%. I am going to leave the stuff batching for longer than normal as it is not all sitting covered up in liquid like it normally is -- more like dye painting than lwi. Also the basic blue and grape below do like a little bit longer batching time.

I decided I wanted to try a gradation of grape (a pure purple color of MX dyes) to Basic Blue. Both of these are moderately weak dyes that don't give very intense colors but should result in some nice blue/purples (I hope).

I always liked the calculation part of chemistry but always hated the exactness which rarely got me the conclusions I was supposed to get anyway!! But it did train me to take notes, develop hypotheses etc. The reward of this type of work is that I get a lot of output for relatively little work as compared to the marbling which is very labor and cost intensive!!

Again, I have been sewing as well and two out of the four aprons have been finished. If my sister Gail guarantees that her husband won't see my blog, I will put pictures up! Otherwise, it will have to wait! All these aprons have required something other than just sewing them together!! Two have marbling on them, one is dyed and one has been plasticized by ironing on the Heat N Bond vinyl covering. I bought a whole bolt of this many, many years ago and never have used it. So all sorts of experiments have been going on.

So off to scrub the dyes off my arms before dinner out!

Putting on My Scientist Hat for a Bit - Back to the Dyeing Board

This is the center of one of my beautiful begonias. What I don't understand is why half the flowers are like this and the other half are huge and have many layers of petals. It is like half the plant is working on being fertilized and the other half is just there for show! The begonias have been spectacular this year

Well, the dyeing table was completely cleaned off and all my full bolts of pfd fabric are safely stored away and nowhere near the furnace anymore. However, I had an increasingly large pile of miscellaneous white fabrics of undetermined fiber (but mostly 100% cotton) and certainly differing degrees of pfd (plain old pfd or mercerized pfd). Some I am sure were leftovers from dyeing sessions (nicely cut into fat halves or full yards). However, there was quite a pile of yardage that I have no idea about.

In addition, there were several bolts of black cotton and some black yardage that I didn't know how well they discharged or what color they discharged to! I even bought some more of those Chlorox pens to test these. Thrilled to find that some of my black sateen (from Joanns) discharges completely to brilliant white! Will have to try the two full bolts I have to see if they are the same. After testing, the other bolts of sateen only bleached to a golden brown -- pretty but not white -- maybe if I leave it in longer....

Now, labelling is my least favorite part of dyeing but label I did! I cut off quarter yards of all the miscellaneous yardage and put corresponding numbers on the quarter yards and on the larger yardage.

I made up a rather large pot of mixing blue (some old powder as I wasn't going for accuracy of color) after soaking the fabric in water first. Fifteen minutes after I had mushed the fabric around sufficiently in the dyes, I added the soda ash solution. None of this was controlled for depth of color.

From my first looks at the fabrics in the washer, a lot of them appear to be pfd and certainly dyeable! There are some I wasn't at all sure about including some polished cotton (whatever they use to polish certainly acts as a resist to the dyes!!). Hopefully I will be able to use those in marbling. If not, they go in the contributions bag. I have quite a collection of "what was I thinking" in there currently. I can't imagine what clothing I had in mind when I bought some of these!!

Well this is the results of my dyeing all arranged as a gradation!! There were about 1/3 that were obviously mercerized and another third that were just pfd and the final third, hmmmmmm.

My biggest surprise was the one below!

This was a stark white (couldn't get it to photo its real color) drapery weight jacquard that I probably bought as a remnant at some point. I have about five yards of it. It dyed as well as the sateen which was the darkest!! It is difficult to see on the piece below but when I iron it, I should be able to clearly see the jacquard pattern. It is really nice fabric! You just never know!!

Besides this happy surprise, I dyed some pieces of linen that I have had for years and it dyed beautifully as well. I also had a piece of cotton twill that dyed extremely well. I was surprised at how well some of my random natural color muslin dyed and may use up that bolt that I bought long ago. It all looked pretty good. The non-mercerized pfd stuff just looked a little duller in color than the mercerized cottons or the sateens. The polished cotton took hardly any color at all. The silk gauze took very little color but that was not unexpected as it is sooo light weight. The cotton interlock I had took very little color and more on one side than the other (curious). The cotton knit I got from Dharma took the color well (like the non-mercerized pfd fabric). I didn't bother trying the rayon as I know that takes dye like crazy!

I never count out the non-pfd fabric. If you want a nice even light color, these work wonderfully as whatever finishes are on the fabric act as a resist. It is amazing to see the differences even in those white on white fabrics. Some obviously have some sort of finish on the front and some don't. You can never tell by looking at them! I really must hit the drapery sections again and see if I can find more of the cotton jacquard!

Quilting by the Lake -- Week 2 Tour Day

Although I had to go to this tour alone, I met several people there that I knew. I really wanted to see what was going on in several of the classrooms (Rayna Gilman and Jane Dunnewold had classes). Was greatly surprised to find my daughter's first viola teacher (who is now the first violist for the Rochester Philharmonic) was in Jane's class and has taken up surface design with gusto! Small world! The work in Jane's classroom was amazing -- they were working with all sorts of water based resists and were having a grand time!! I enjoyed Rayna's classroom as well but would really have liked to see more of what was done the first few days she was there in the surface class. I heard from one of my friends that it was excellent though as she was in the class.

The picture above is looking toward one of the sculptures on campus. It is a pretty campus with a lovely walkway which crosses a woody ravine .

It was really worth going to this second session as there was a lot of interesting work going on and I saw many of my old friends who I had missed the first time around! After you go to QBL a number of years, you meet people that you only see once a year but who become QBL friends and someone to be hugged when you run into them in faraway places (like Houston).



This was a piece by Sue Benner who will be teaching next year. I loved her use of color and pattern!

These two pieces are both by Elin Noble who I can't say enough good about!! The first is illustrating the indigo which she will be teaching one session next year and the second is a piece illustrating some of her marbling. Double click to look closer as it is fantastic. The pictures are a little blurry as I wasn't using a flash. Please make sure you don't sign up for the indigo class before I get the chance to get in!! Her classes fill quickly (as well they should).

This is Caren's class work from Bob Adams class. The top piece was one she worked on in Cynthia Corbin's class two years ago and is going to use the machine stitching she learned in Bob's class to complete. I was blown away by his work, many of which follow!
These next few pieces were in Bob Adams' classroom and I really liked them!! He graciously gave me permission to photograph all of them! Yes, I told him they would be in my blog! You really need to double click on these to see the detail. He uses discharge techniques extensively as well as a LOT of machine stitching!

Amelia!

Well, thought I would be doing some dyeing and cleaned off my table thoroughly but the air conditioning decided to call it quits so I had to move everything around so now my dyeing table is COVERED with pfd fabric. (Note to self -- don't buy any more pfd fabric in the foreseeable future). I have enough tshirts and white fabric for the rest of my life of dyeing!

Anyway, the good news was that I got to do a video chat with my beautiful 4 month old granddaughter (thank you again Google for this wonderful free service). I found that you can hit Prt Sc and capture the image and then convert it from BMP to Jpeg using Windows Paint. So here is the latest and greatest picture of my beautiful granddaughter! She lives on the other side of the country in Seattle where they are having record high temperatures these days. Luckily my son in law had the foresight to buy an air conditioner a couple of weeks ago so they aren't suffering as you can see from the picture! You can't even find air conditioners there right now!

Marbling - THE END!

I finally finished up all the fabric and will save the rest of the goo (I usually go through this neverending process of alum-ing more fabric, running out of goo, making more goo etc., etc.)! It really re-energized me and am looking forward to doing a little dyeing and finishing my challenge quilt and the lillies that are awaiting some more work!

As I was sitting at my computer this morning, a deer went through the backyard and then right by the window where the cats were sitting -- they clearly couldn't figure out what was going on! I know, lots of you have deer in your yards. Although we live on a very wooded lot with a bevy of other forest creatures, deer are still an unusual sight in the yard although this is the second time in two weeks that one has been through here. I have seen coyote, raccoons, lots of chipmunks and wild turkeys. Black bears are up this far north now and we did have one lost moose in town a number of years ago. Sadly a bear died on the other side of town a few weeks ago when the wildlife officers tried to get it out of the neighborhood to relocate back down further south. Bears have been expanding their territory northward for the past several years.

Like the one above, this was done on a very nondescript failed shibori piece.

This was on a very, very ugly piece of red with a greyish tinge and worse yet, on cheap muslin!

Like the first one, I played with some combs again today although hadn't gone full speed ahead. It is fun to play with them.

No more for a couple of months though!! Getting all cleaned up -- not that we have had a day conducive to hanging alum-ed fabric out on the line. It rains every day and the temps have rarely even gotten into the 80s so far this year. No salt dyeing this summer!

I Promise Only a Couple More Days of Marbling!

Well Rochester NY may be known for a lot of bad weather but usually not tornadoes and last night there were two in the area -- the first in our county since 1981. On the east side of Rochester, we fared better but this is the clouds coming in for the severe thunderstorms that we had last night. The rain just won't stop this summer.

Last night two more yards of white alum-ed fabric were discovered in my sewing room! It is not very great cloth but it was white and it did have alum in it so most of it got marbled this morning so I am now down to about 6 pieces of fabric left which will get done tomorrow and then cleanup and some dyeing.

This was actually combed (with a comb of all things) just for the heck of it. Every once in awhile, I feel the need to do something a little more traditional!

This matches the piece above where I did the more traditional marbling. Still working in the same palette.

This fabric is pretty coarse but okay for just playing around. I had purchased quite a bit of it for dyeing but it doesn't take the dye at all well -- fine for those nice light colors but it is a little heavier and coarser than I like for quilting.

This was the first print of the day when thre is always some gop left on the size that gives you white lines which I rarely try to remove.

I have about 2 quarts of goop left for marbling and may just dump that on top of what is there tomorrow and just finish up the remaining pieces!

Nearing the End of the Uglies

Some new things I have learned. (1) I like having nice new size; (2) the GAC900 is a really good surfactant -- it makes most paints float better without trashing the size like some of the stronger ones -- even worked really well on the ProChem Marbling paints which I haven't liked using particularly; (3) the new secret for me in rinsing is making the rinse water just slightly warm (maybe 90 degrees give or take) -- excess seems to come off with just a dunk or two instead of four or five dunks which has muddied some of my pieces.

Philosophically, this making over of the uglies is a real theme in my work. I am drawn to things that many think of as ugly or horrible and trying to make them beautiful or at least attractive to the eye. I had known that in my art quilts but hadn't seen the parallel in my marbling -- there is something very satisfying about taking fabric you don't care for and remaking it. Of course I have found that my idea of beauty is wildly divergent from some of the norms. Probably why I just keep my mouth shut when selling some of my fabric! (Then again, this could all be my old cheap New England thriftiness ingrained in me from my mother.)

My favorite from today. An old stripey piece that I covered with mostly red and some blue. The stripes were mostly shades of blue.


This was a piece of commercial rust colored fabric that I had discharged shibori-style and it was just plain boring. This is a little better.

This was a class piece where I had experimented with all kinds and sizes of stamping of dyes -- also all colors of the rainbow. Not sure if this is much better but maybe bookmarks!

This was a very boring piece of commercial batik that I had in nondescript muted colors. Much improved (imho).

This is another of the ones with the really swirled background done as a class piece.

After today, only have five more uglies that need to be covered! I was definitely in the zone this morning and did nine at one sitting (really standing) before I came to a halt for lunch!

Next on my agenda is some shibori dyeing and maybe some discharging as well. This will entail a major cleanup from the marbling, as paint is just so much messier than dyeing!! Even though I am your basic slob, I have never been able to start new projects without a cleanup of the old stuff (even when I was working in corporate America).