Shibori and Printing

A friend came to play today. It certainly makes the waiting time pass when there is someone to talk to. It's fun to watch others create.

We started out with some "simple" shibori style. (Someone put me in my place today and said "that's just Tie-dye!" They don't understand!!.......................)

I bunched and tied mine in 8 places. I was disappointed at first. but it wasn't until after It had been rinsed and dried that the variation showed through.






Then we decided to "paint" with the dye. While my friend had a specific thing in mind, I just played.

Red. orange and yellow were the colours of the day so I started with a rather abstract design.

Later in the day I over-dyed it with blue.
Might stand some more work.

And then I wanted to try "stamping" with the dye.
My home made stamps worked very well. As with paint the secret is "less is more".







As I can never leave well enough alone, this was also over dyed with green, then blue.

I was very pleased with how the stamps held their own.


This needs a little more work. I'm thinking I want to push it towards brown.......


And of course because I can't throw away anything, I dribbled the remaining red, orange and yellow "paint" over a full metre, adding water to saturate and move the dye, then over dyed it with blue.

Using the Painted and Dyed Panels

I knew a few days ago I would make some sort of bag from these two. The painted panel comprises one side and the dyed panel is the other side.
I found a pattern I liked in Susan Briscoe's book, " 21 terrific patchwork bags ". These panels aren't patch work but the are checkerboard.........today that's close enough.

It took the two full FQ. The strap is pieced from the leftovers and it's lined with leftovers from the guild challenge.
(Very environmentally conscious.)
( My husband has trouble with my attitude, that I'm not going to make/dye/paint something unless I have a use for it. Maybe not a true adventuresome Artist's mind but...)

This design is called a Tea Bag purse...I wonder why? LOL
Perfect summer bag!
Perfect NEW summer bag.

Over Dyeing

I need to take a break and decide what cloth I want to produce. Directling it toward a purpose makes much more sense to me than just continually playing.
I wasn't satisfied with some of the pieces I had done so today I over-dyed them. I really have no use as yet for the classic shibori navy and white, so they were the first to go. 

                                           From this to this

   
  And this mostly white to a mixture of blue

The addition of yellow....
 ( I just realized this looks like genes)

   The yellow makes the backside of this piece.












And while I was WAITING for all these pieces, I finished the piece I'm calling
"Spirits of Western Canada"

Shibori Success.

It's pouring rain and while it certainly wasn't drying weather, I still had to play.
I rooted through all the dyes my husband had bought several years ago and found a navy.

So I decided to try the shibori style again.
Its wasn't the only thing I tried but it certainly is the only one worth posting. As Hubby says anything useless can be over dyed.

Quite a sequence with dying. Mixing the dye, adding the cloth, waiting, adding the soda ash, waiting, rinsing pre drying, washing with synthropol and a final ironing.
Not to be undertaken lightly.

Wrong!
Lost of fun. Rules are made to be broken and sometimes the results are great.
This piece I am very happy with.

But I still may overdye!

Shibori Style?

We were late rising this morning. Still catching up on our sleep after our exciting Wednesday. I cleaned the house, made some sweets for my company this evening, chauffeured my hubby around for a while and STILL managed to get in some dyeing.

I went for the rushed shibori style this time, (rolled on a tube and tied, then scrunched) using what I could find on hand.
Amazing what a McGyver mind can find around the house. My limitation was the container for the dye. I ended up using a 2 litre pop bottle with the top  2 inches cut off.
Not terribly stable so that went into a pail and the pail went into a bucket. I really didn't want a blue garage floor.
Hubby suggested I try an alternate method where the soda ash is mixed in with the dye and the process takes just over an hour. That sounded reasonable.
So without further ado, here it is.

The definition isn't as clear as it might be. Tied too close? or not tight enough? I didn't have any indigo but my blue looks very nice, very usable.
The bottom edge is the top of the fabric that wasn't quite submerged in the dye. After a lot of thought I figured out the three vertical lines. I had wrapped a cardboard tube with a plastic bag. The lines are where the wrapping overlapped and formed a hard edge. Gotta get some ABS pipe.
We think it should have been darker. I'm not sure adding the soda ash at the beginning was correct. I'll continue to play.

Now its time to wash the floor.!!
Joy!

Dyeing on my Own

I had meant to do some serious work yesterday but the household was diverted with some medical stuff.
We're back, We're fine.
But I went ahead today in spite of all the conflicting instructions you can find on the internet.

I KNOW I should keep records of colour mixtures etc. but I'm still playing with technique. This is cheaper than the paint and today's tub dyeing is the most economical.

The first "blue" was a straightforward 2:1 mixture of blue and yellow, added separately and not stirred.
Hmmmmmmmmm nice!

The second piece I did "shibori style. This time I used and orange and a brown. Added separately from either end of the container.
Not bad either.

Tomorrow? Hopefully I'll get started early as we have company coming for the weekend.

Spirit Animals

I puzzled over this piece a few days.
The Bear was great but it wasn't enough on that piece of fabric.
It didn't WANT to CUT the fabric so I had to fill it.
Some companion animals did the trick.
One Bear, 2 Ravens and 2 Fish.
Just needs a dark binding.

Painted Fabric - Batch Painting

One of the things I do a lot of is cameos of little birds. Chickadees, Finches etc.
It's the kind of thing I can mass produce. I'll sit down at my Juki and thread paint 4 or 5 birds at a time.
I wanted something universal to use as a background so I wouldn't spend more time fussing than the time it took to make the thread painting.

So 16 backgrounds was my goal this afternoon. That's a metre of cloth.

Using the folds as a guide, I painted 16 blobby bits of sky.

Each was edged with more or less yellow to give a bright green to the edge.

So here's the distribution. They're all different, but the same.

After adding various shade of green using several techniques, brush, sponge, and stencils this cloth was ready.
Between each application it was dried and ironed. I spent 4 hours this afternoon "watching paint dry".

Then they were evenly chopped.

So I have 16 backgrounds ready for when the "bird" mood strikes me.

Paint vs Dye

There can be no contest. It will always come down to personal preference and intended use.

This morning I made a duplicate "plaid" using paint. No it's not quite the same. I changed the order of the colour application and because I wanted to use the same applicator, there was a time lag that allowed the paint to set and start drying, while I cleaned the brush. That last pass with yellow, I ran short of paint.

Here is yesterday's dye,

                            And here is today's painted piece.

But the results are interesting. I will make these two FQ into a tote with each side representing a nice study in the medium.

Because I used dye that was dissolved in alginate, it was very spreadable on dry fabric. The paint less so. The alginate also kept the dye wet longer so there was more movement and colour mixing. The green and the purple on the dyed fabric were surprisingly more developed. Do I want to redo the exp. using wet fabric for my paint? No, I think I'll leave this experiment where it stands.

Painted Fabric - My Journey to the Dark Side

It was a lovely day so while I was waiting for hubby I painted a whole metre of fabric. Two passes, using a thinner version the second time and crumble drying, I ended with a nice interesting piece of blue.

Then it happened................He arrived with the DYES. (Actually, he's been wooing me all week.)

I had rejected dye a year ago, because of all the fuss and restrictions.
He took care of all that.
I didn't want something I had to use in a limited time.
He took care of all that by premixing some of the ingredients that can be held.
I really didn't want to work with something where we had to wear gloves.
That one, we threw out the window. Someday our hands will come clean. LOL

I went to the dark side today and I painted with dye.
NICE.

We worked only with the primaries today, First I made "plaid" to see how the colours would mix.
(Now I'm trying to think of something to make from this FQ.)

Then I "painted" with dye. Almost as slick as paint, but. oh my..........COLOUR.

It is a little more fuss and bother, but.........................
I WILL do this again.

Painted Fabric - Using the Fabric

The background I completed the other day has been asking for a different use, as a finish. I thought about putting a standard Bear or Elk in the picture but using commercial fabric to portray their normal colouring didn't seem to work with this "batik-ed" background.

One of the darker pieces I did earlier in the week seemed to be the right tone.

So I went back to the abstract and found this Tattoo.

This was cut from the darker material and wedded to dark brown "suede".
Placing it on the landscape..... it just seems right. Just quirky enough.

This now needs to be stitched and quilted. 

Painted Fabric - 4

What to do with a "sow's ear"?

                                 

This piece is pretty awful so I played around, going for earthy tones as my final product.

I set it over night in a "rust" environment. After rinsing, I gave it a yellow wash, a brown wash and finally a dose of muddy green.

Now I have something that will work in forest scenes, leaves and shadows.

Painted Fabric - 3

I was a little slow off the mark today. I didn't think the day would warm up enough to get the rapid drying I like. But it did!
I have quite a bit of fresh fabric and I have a number of things in my head that I intend to do.....
Which first?
Do I have all I want/need?
One thing my group of friends didn't want to do this time round was a dedicated background, It is something I've done before but there were a few things I wanted to try. It's easy to get a sharp edge with paint. It's done by using dry material. The paint doesn't move unless you push it, either with the applicator or water.

I'd seen a few interesting pieces so I thought I'd see if I could create a usable piece.

After adding and heat setting a light blue wash to the whole cloth, I dry brushed some purple hills.

Some green/brown hills, again dry brushed and heat set.

Green hills, dry set, water, sponge applied, and then "trees" dabbed on with the edge of a sponge brush.


Nice but a little dull, so I gave the whole piece a darker blue wash and crumpled it and set it to dry.

     Yes, I sat and watched paint dry,
                            ( well not really but that's the last piece.)

So now I have this on a FQ. A lot more is going on and other features are implied.

And what did I do while I "watched the paint dry"?
I made a piece of RED RED.

From the first pass of dilute pure colours

                     to this delicious FQ of RED











That's it for today!

Painted Fabric Series 2 - Sky

I thought I'd focus on one genre, making some dedicated cloth rather than jumping around.
Today was sky.

I did 7 pieces. Some were great, some so so, and some will be used elsewhere. That's how it goes.

The first two are rather simple,

grades of diluted blue and the second with additional colour.




This one was "tarted" up a bit with salt.
It's okay but not great.

Less blue and a little pink probably makes this the best sky of the day.

I rooted around in a few boxes and found a sea sponge.
Tried and true, it produced a great cloth but I can't decide whether it's sky or water!

I'd been wanting to try using the opaque Pearl to see if it would work for clouds.

A definite NO.
I had been thinking of white ink. I'll try that next time.
The issue with the seta translucent is there is no white.

This produced a beautiful piece of MARBLE.
Maybe parts could be used for sky.....?

 And the last two are just  Duds.

I will find a use for them but not as prominent sky.