Discharging a Birthday

Our guest of honor Gabby with her grandmother Susan, came over to discharge T-shirts for a 10th birthday celebration. We began by painting Jacquard Discharge paste through a stencil, with a foam brush.

Using a steam iron takes concentration. The iron activates the discharge paste to remove color from the T.

The luck of the birthday girl. This blue T-shirt has an underlying color of orange! Wow!

Susan's burgundy T-shirt had lots of contrast, and her leaf stencils showed up very well.

Amy's red T-shirt came out very well, some extra ferns were added later.

The large rose on the front of the black T-shirt, got company of a flight of butterflies and dragonflies on the backside.

The blue and orange combo makes this a very striking T-shirt, it took more effort and concentration to get the whole stencil done.

Hawaiian orange with large jungle leaf, rose and more butterflies and dragonflies, finish off the fashion show.

Grandma Susan, Gabby and Amy, show off their finished T's. A new back to school wardrobe, then lunch out with Grandma and Grandpa, make a wonderful Birthday treat.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right column and see what other wonderful artists are doing.

Ice Dyeing Adventure

Since Spring has turned to Summer, I have been waiting for a chance to do some Ice Dyeing, but we had an unusually cool June, so I finally got my chance. The temps were supposed to be in the 90's, so I got up early to get things set up. I had prepared some fabric with Shibori stitching, to make a snowflake design, I had seen some on a blog a while ago. I folded the fabric first, and took 1/4" stitches thru all the layers, and pulled it tight and knotted the thread. I also had some 1/3 yard pieces of white fabric and two T-shirts. I soaked all the fabric in soda ash, from an old gallon jug that I had. Mistake #1. After all the work, the color came out in the wash, even with Synthrapol. So I learned the hard way, to use fresh soda ash, even tho some of the books say it can be stored and saved. When I undid the stitching, there was no white line, the dye had worked it's way into all the fabric. There was some design from the folding, but I over dyed every thing, so no stitch lines any more.

So the next day I got to play again! I have small "berry baskets" from the dollar store. They are different from a lot of the plastics, in that they have holes in the bottom for the dye to drain. They are great to hold your fabric and a pile of ice. Then they are placed on metal shelf racks, to drain on the ground. Don't do this on cement or a patio, the dye needs to runs through or you end up with muddy colors. I tried using just the shelf racks only, but it was hard to pile up the ice and keep it in place. The berry baskets can even be clipped to a clothes line to drip. After piling on the ice, I used a Popsicle stick to scoop up dry dye powder and sprinkle it on top of the ice. You need about a 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of dye powder for each T-shirt or half yard of fabric. I use several colors on each piece, so use your judgment as to the amount of dye powder. Everything was covered in plastic and left to "batch," it sits for 24 hours, to set the dye, and it needs to get over 70', that's why I waited for a hot day.
The next morning I rinsed each piece of fabric until the water ran almost clear, then put it all in the washing machine with a capful of "Synthrapol." I can't wait to see the results, after the fabric comes out of the drier. The drier heat sets the colors, so no need to iron the fabric to heat set.

Three squares of fabric, the two with concentric patterns were folded and put on the rack, under the t-shirt to catch drips, the other was just scrunched up in a basket.

I used Procion MX dyes, the first has fuchsia, red, deep purple, maybe some blue. The second has red, orange, golden yellow and bronze. I ripped about 12" strips off of a bolt of good quality white cotton.

Bright green, bronze, black and a little turquoise. Then fuchsia, red, deep purple and violet purple.

The 3 squares of folded and stitched fabric, were dyed with turquoise, medium blue, navy blue and black. Since they were over dyed, after I pulled out the stitching, no pattern is apparent, but I like the stormy sky effect that I got.

Another drip piece of fabric placed under the upper rack to catch the dye that drips down. And me in my T-shirt, I love the way it came out. I wish I had more green like the sleeve has. Most of the blue mixed with the reds to make purple, and the yellow made orange, instead of being clear areas of color. I used all my dyes, in small bits, to make this multicolor extravaganza.

The first t-shirt had some embroidery around the collar which did not dye, because it was polyester thread. I really like how the design shows up, you could not see it white on white. The 2nd T was scrunched in a tray, and I put jet black, then navy blue, and working my way up I added medium blue and turquoise. Then I added a little bit of violet purple on the top area. I really like how this turned out darker at the bottom, with the color at the top, I did this "on purpose" ha ha ha. Things don't often happen as I plan them. I had a great time, even tho I had to do it twice. I have two T-shirts left and another 2 yards of white fabric begging to have color on them. And it's going to get HOT again!

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other wonderful textile artists are doing this week.

Art Retreat

What a wonderful time we all had at the Bandon Art Retreat, eight of us from Fyber Cafe, spent 3 days on the beautiful Southern Oregon coast. For more details of what everyone did, check out the Fyber Cafe blog, click here The retreat center above Forget-Me-Knots Quilt Shop click here is a great space, it sleeps 8, has a BIG sewing area with a whole wall of design space, and a wall of floor to ceiling windows, a large kitchen and quilts on all the beds, within walking distance of "Old Town Bandon."

I spent most of my time working on quilting a top I had made at the first retreat 2 years ago. I had used only hand dyed fabrics I had made at our dye workshops. I free hand cut the petal shapes and arranged them on the large design wall. It had been a very freeing, loose, way to work, I had just wanted to have fun and be creative. So I spent Monday afternoon and evening and all day Tuesday quilting on it, lots of hours and thread. I used rayon threads and at least 10 bobbins of superfine black thread. Each petal is quilted with a different pattern, if we had not stopped at Landreth's and seen her quilting samples that she has for her long arm machine, I probably would have quilted them all with an echo flame pattern. But she got me thinking outside of the box, and freed me up to do lots of fun, different designs. I had thought about using a rainbow thread in the black, but I am glad I did not, the black gave your eye a place to rest, confetti colors would have made it very busy. Instead I made little curlycues coming off the tips of the petals.

I finished all but the top right corner, I needed a few more petals, and my big table at home to trim it up square. I got it finished the next week and am still working on hand stitching the binding. I finally thought of a title, "Exuberance."

Wednesday morning I cleaned up and put my sewing machine away, and then worked on some T-shirts. I used Jacquard Decolourant with stencils to decorate 4 dark t-shirts. The bleach discharge paste, worked well, once it had dried, it is ironed to heat activate the bleaching process. The clock work/gears one, I took home and cut a reverse stencil of some of the gears, and used copper acrylic paint to add more detail.

I also did a teal shirt, with large gingko leaves on it, with a commercial stencil and some small gingko leaves with hand made stencils. We all had a great time, potlucking, going to lunch, going to the beach, shopping at "Old Town" touristy shops, visiting the new Face Rock Creamery(cheese factory) and the "Wool Shoppe" in Langlois, South of town, where we got some Merino/silk blends in luscious colors for needle felting and spinning. See the Fyber Cafe blog for more details.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column, to see what other wonderful artists are up to this week.