Fabric Dyeing & Silk Scarves

Our Fyber Café art group had a dyeing work shop at Tracy's in June. It was the least hot of our options, as it was going to be over 100' in Grants Pass. We had a wonderful friendship salad, everyone brings something to add to the greens. I worked on mostly shibori dyeing, wrapping cotton yarn around fabric on PVC pipe, then scrunching it together. I used two colors of dye on each, but I think the cotton yarn soaked up too much dye and did not act as a resist enough. The patterning is subtle.

I had previously done a bunch of fabric with indigo Procion MX dye, so wanted to use other colors. The greens are lime squeeze and bright green with some warm black.

Magenta and bright purple made a vibrant color combo, the pattern is wonderful. The magenta and indigo is more sundued.

I also dyed several silk scarves, we use the MX dyes just like the cotton. I scrunched them up and ice dyed them. Two of the scarves are devore rayon/silk patterned scarves. The pink/purple was done with MX dyes. The blue/green dyed scarf was done at a class, where we used silk dyes, I believe they are called "Alter Ego." You add two different types of dye to the same dye bath. One dyes rayon, the other chemicals dye the silk. It is boiled in canning jars on the stove. When you remove the scarf from the dye bath it is TWO DIFFERENT colors, MAGIC! Most of the other group members made ice dyed fabric, we like the technique a lot. You don't have to mix up all the dye solutions, just use the dry dye powder. It is very easy, and you have no control of the outcome, you have to let go and accept what ever happens. I am linking this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here see what other talented textile artists are doing this week.

Serenity Pond

Serenity Pond is finished and hanging at the Umpqua Valley Quilters' Guild Show. The show is this weekend in Roseburg Oregon at the Fairgrounds, April 26-28, 2019. I had a lot of little details to finish up, the dragonflies, the shadow of the rock, gold painted highlights, and toning down the striped fabric on the branch. It all got done with time to spare, Including dyeing more indigo for the binding and getting the label sewn on. It is made entirely with my hand dyed fabrics.

I also added some brass Chinese coins to the squares on the left edge, to give it a bit of an Asian flare. And because the Fyber Café challenge was to add some metal objects to the work. The rocks have additional acrylic paint on them, I'm glad I added this, as the hand dyed fabric was beautiful as it was, but the paint made it even better.

The leaves and the moon have gold metallic paint added, the extra shimmer really adds depth and highlights. I'm very proud of this one. It was started in a class with Claudia Law of Ashland, Oregon. I am linking this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here see what other talented artists are doing this week.

Dyeing Play Day

Our Fyber Café group had another fabric dyeing play day at Meredith's in Grants Pass last week. We had great weather and smoke free skies. I did some more shibori and helped others learn how. The first piece is done with Procion MX Terra Cotta dye, the 2nd is Bronze. we love the bronze, it mixes well with other colors and sometimes the colors separate so we really did not know what color it really was. This is the first piece I have only used Bronze.

These three pieces were done with turquoise, electric blue and indigo. The photo really doesn't do the colors justice.

Bronze and electric blue, I really like this piece.

I did 3 pieces by accordion folding them, then ice dyeing them with combos of terra cotta, fire engine red, rose brown, and fuchsia. They are folded in half so you see only a part of the fabric.

As soon as I got home from that I packed for a 3 day camping trip to the Oregon coast. It was so beautiful

It was glorious weather, great tide pools, campfire and friends. I am linking this with Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other talented textile artists are doing.

Parfait Dyeing

I finally got a chance to play with dyes in my new "Wet Studio." I had made up a dozen bottles of Procion MX dye concentrates for a play day for our fiber art group. I wanted to use up some of the leftovers dyes before they lost their oomph. The last batch of dyes I had done this summer with old dyes, and I got some very pretty pastels. They were good to add to the stash, but not what I was looking for. I even over dyed some of them this time. Using 24oz. yogurt containers, I scrunched a piece of fabric, one color dye, a second piece of fabric and a different dye, then a third. This is called parfait dying and in each layer some of the color mixes with the layer below and above it. Some really beautiful blended colors can be made, you just have to be careful not to make mud. Altho I do make mud on purpose sometimes. You can see I made quiet a few fat 1/4s, also a few nice cotton handkerchiefs.

I made a variety of greens, from lime squeeze with a touch of yellow, to pretty pale seafoam, and some nice olive colors. One of the wet dark olive colors was gorgeous, but it came out so much lighter. Next time I'll try to get a deeper color.

At the summer play day I had made a few shibori pieces on PVC pipes. The most basic thing I learned is a two color piece needs a bigger diameter pipe, the small diameter the dye colors blend together, but with a 6" dia. you can put on two or three colors and they will stay separate.

You can see some of the color blending here, the pinks have purple in them, the purple has indigo. These are my favorites, with the patterning of the scrunched fabric and the multi colors.

My cleanup cloth is some times the very best. I spilled a lot of fire engine red that day, my hands were red for days.

I tried to get some yellow variations with lemon yellow, antique gold and terra cotta. Some very nice caramel colors resulted from it. Now, to find a new project to use my hand dyes on. I try to have at least one project in the works that uses my hand dyes, mostly mixed with a solid black to make the colors POP! I had LOTS of FUN playing in my studio with these. We are having another dye play day at one of our members in Grants Pass at the end of the month, so more fun to come. I am linking this with Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to check out what other talented artists are doing this week.

Earth, Wind, Fire and Water

I have made a small wall hanging from one of the fabrics that I made at Craft Napa. It is a bold black and white shibori print, that I wanted to add red to. At Craft Napa, I had stenciled the 3 red circles, and printed the paisley stamp, and used the end of the brush to do the red dots. It looked very oriental so I stenciled the Japanese characters for Earth, wind, fire and water onto the clearest spots. It looks rather crowded and the characters don't stand out very well. I am going to outline them with several rows of stitching with a gold metallic thread, to help them show better.

I accidentally started to free motion quilt with regular polyester thread, in black, so I continued with the white thread. However it shows why I like to use rayon thread with the size 90 needle. The rayon fluffs up a bit and fills the larger holes made with the 90 needle. I used a red rayon thread on the circles and dots. I will add some outlining on the paisley when I get home to go thru my threads for the right color, it is kind of burgundy. I am up near Seattle visiting my sister, I brought a few small projects with me. I started to stitch the binding, but the light is not good enough to hand stitch black on black, so I'll wait 'til I am home. I am going to give the wall hanging to my nephews to thank them for their hospitality, while staying with them while in Napa. Check out the link to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" to see what other great textile artists are doing this week.click here