Soy Wax Resist

My friends Susan and Jenny came over to work with the soy wax again. Jenny is working on a batik based on a Maxwell Parish painting. She is doing it for the Fyber Café challenge "Flights of Fancy."

Susan and I added another layer of dye and wax to the pieces we made last time and waxed a few more. I got two new drying racks at Grocery Outlet when I was in Washington. A great deal at $7.50, the ones at Walmart are $20.

I added the bling to the characters of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. Using Sulky mylar gold thread, I free motion stitched slowly so I could get a long stitch length, so the gold would show well. I also finished the binding and label. The tension was off when I stitched the white so I had white dots pop up on the black backing, so I used a Pigma pen to color all the dots black. It looks so much better now.

When I was at my sister's in Washington, I got this beautiful Poppy fabric at Quilting Mahem in Snohomish. I got the last 2 yards on the bolt, and wanted to just do a simple setting. I cut out large 8" squares and added either the coral print or teal/coral batik in a 2 inch border. I had enough floral to set it on point, and do a decent width border. I did go back and get another 1/2 yard of the teal and coral, so I had enough for a final border and binding. It only took me a couple of easy afternoons to get it finished. It's about 70" square. I will be linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here check to see what other awesome textile artists are doing this week.

Evening with Judy Coats Perez

The first day at Craft Napa, I also took an evening class with Judy Coats Perez. The class was for making foam stamps. She had an adhesive foam sheet for each of us, a clear polyester film and tracing paper. I had not used adhesive foam before, I had tried to use Elmers to glue two regular sheets together, which did not work very well. We drew designs on the tracing paper with a pencil, and flipped it onto the foam. Then we rubbed over the back of the paper and it transferred the image to the foam. The designs were cut out with an Exacto knife, the paper backing pulled off, and it was adhered to the clear polyester film. I ended up just using my paper scissors to cut out the design on the foam, unless it was a very tiny area.

Judy had several reference books for us to use, one was flowers and plants, the other animals drawn in different cultural styles. I did the animal stamps from some of the images I found in the book. The back of the alligator was cut with a scalloped paper crafting scissors, as well as some of the leaves in the previous photo. I really liked putting the foam on the clear polyester film, being able to see through it was great for alignment when printing. The sheets are called Dur-a-lar .005 thickness, the pack I got at the art supply was 25 sheets for $12.50. She said you can also order it from Dick Blick catalog. I wonder how it will work for cutting stencils? It was a good weight and certainly cheaper than stencil plastic.

In Sue Bleiweiss' class, she also gave us foam but she used a heavy book cover cardboard, because she used to bind books, and she had a lot of it! At the evening class with Judy everyone was already tired from the full day of class. We thought the class was maybe 6-8pm, no one could remember, but the class was 6:30 to 9:30. Whew, we were tired, but class was low key, just cutting up foam for stamps. We all kind of faded at 9 and left early.

Last week two friends came over and we played with soy wax. Jenny wanted to do a batik for the Fyber Café challenge "Flights of Fancy." I told her how the soy wax was much better than the traditional paraffin and beeswax mix. The soy wax melts at a low temp and washes out with hot water. Even tho I first remove as much wax as possible with newspaper and an iron, before putting the fabric in the washing machine. She is drawing a fairy sitting on a rock, based on a Maxfield Parrish painting. Susan and I just played with stamping the wax onto fat quarters, with different tools.

I used a squiggly bendy straw for the purple dyed one. I already had some dye made up, and I made a dye thickener to paint dye with. The directions for the sodium alginate said "add a little to some fluid" how do you interpret those directions? I put a teaspoon in a pint Mason jar of water and stirred it up. It clumped instantly and took a bit of stirring but it thickened fast. I probably could have used less powder. We had little paper cups, added about 2 tablespoons of goop and a good squirt of dye, then we used foam brushes to apply the dye.

We cleaned up at noon, Susan and I will add more wax and dye layers at another time. We went to Los Dos Amigos Mexican restaurant for Margaritas... and lunch.

I am linking this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other talented textile artists are doing this week.

Dyeing Workshop 2010

Our annual fabric dyeing workshop at Vera's was this weekend. We had loads of fun, even tho it got to 100' on Saturday, arrgh!! I was working on batik pieces that I had already waxed at home, and it was so hot, my cheap foam brush with the dye was rubbing the wax right off the fabric, what a mess. I put it aside at lunch time, and let it dry out back in the shade. During the afternoon I went down to her pottery studio- dye workshop, which had struggling air conditioning, and dye a quantity of fabric. I used a 3 layer technique, I start with one piece of fabric in a small tub, add dye, then fixative, then another piece of fabric, a second dye and fix, then a third layer. It helps if you don't stir the fabric, it blends and bleeds in some areas and not others, making a blotchy blend of colors on each piece. It is also fun to use very different colors, like eggplant(dark purple) +turquoise+ yellow gold. If you know your color theory you can kinda predict what it will make, but it is usually a surprise, cause you don't know how much it will blend or stay separate. These were my favorite types of dyeing to do. On Sunday we had it cooler, so I got to finish working on the batiks. I did about 10 pieces, they each got 3 colors layered on, with wax added at each step. The darker colors added last, really highlighted the lighter colors that I had waxed over. When I got home I ironed with lots of newspaper to remove some of the wax. It is a real pain to do, I still have more pieces to do later. The soy wax we used is water soluble with hot water and soap, but our plumbing is so old, I didn't want it coagulating in the pipes as the water cooled. I will finish it in the washing machine when I am done ironing as much wax out as I can.

more dye photos

Dyeing and Batik photos

Here are the photos of the fabric I dyed and the batik pieces, next results and conclusions.

Part III, continued

Part II continued, oops, I was trying to spell check those last two words and thought I had deleted the whole entry. So please forgive the spelling mistakes, I know they are wrong, but it published instead of corrected the words. At least it wasn't lost. Spontinaeity, and intuitiveness, however they are spelled, are the driving force of the day. It probably helped that I wasn't "drawing" anything, if I had drawn lines, swirls or shapes, I would have been "thinking" about what I was doing with my hands. What way should the line curve, "oops, wrong way" making judgements about my decisions. This was so "freeing" letting it flow. The last workshop, when we were painting with the dyes, that is what happened, we were trying to make something, a picture, trying to control the outcome, instead of just making a mess with dye layers, imprinting, marks and color. We had brought lots of tools for printing, bubble wrap, brayers, string, rubber stamps, and masking tape. We were still trying to "DO" something with it. Instead of just playing with texture, colors, layers. We were hesitant, unsure of our tools, or techniques or what we were trying to achieve. I can really see alot of growth in the way I approached this workshop. Maybe just the excitement overwhelmed me. I was so focused on what I was doing, I didn't even pay much attention to what other people were doing. I answered questions, passed tools and paper towels, tried not to get in the way or get run over when I put my fabrics out to dry. I stayed focus on what I was doing. No bathroom breaks, no stopping to take photos, I hardly wanted to stop for lunch. But it was especially nice not having the phone ring, my husband wanting to go out, stopping to sweep the kitchen floor, just because I went in there to get a paper towel or rinse fabric in the sink. All the thousand different things that interupt our daily lives, interfereing in the process of making art. Just playing and having FUN!!

Adventures in Fabric Dyeing, part II

Adventures in dyeing , part II. The night before the workshop, at the last moment, I decided I eeded to prep some already dyed fabric, to get one step ahead of the game. I found several lightly colored pieces from previous workshops, some were done with liquid Rit dye. I soaked them in soda ash mixture, set them out to dry for awhile, then lightly ironed them smooth. I remember Vera saying not to scorch the soda ash with the iron. I set up newspaper to absorb excess wax, on the dining room table, with the skillet set up to melt the wax. I only used a stamping process, covering the entire fat 1/4 with abstract patterns. I used the circle edge of a plastic cup, the bottom of two different thread spools that looked like a half of a lemon, cookie cutter flower and heart shape, and the parralel wires of a pastry blender. I did six pieces of fabric, two of them plain pieces of muslin, not pre-dyed. I am glad I pre made fabric for the batik, it saved alot of time at the dye workshop to have one layer of dye and wax already done.

Arriving at Vera's, I was so jazzed up, I couldn't wait to get strarted. We covered tables with plastic tableclothes, and mixed the dye concentrates into sodium algenate too make thickened dye paste/paint. Quilting Arts mag, recommended the dye be thick like honey, but I thought it needed a little watering down to seap in and spread around easier. Beacuse the soy wax is water soluble you don't want to do imersion dyeing.

I was so focused, so intense!! Just buzzing with excitement! I started painting dye over the already waxed pieces. I used a medium color, green or turquiose. I didn't worry too much about the color outcome, just something in the mid range value wise. The flower piece I added fuschia that came out a nice bright pink. Slapping dye over the entire piece of fabric, no detail painting. I laid the pieces out in the sun to dry the dye, while I worked on the next piece. After they were all dyed, I started melting wax for the next layer. I laid down newspaper and stamped several pieces with extra designs, the spools and pastry cutter. The flowers and circles I painted with a foam brush, leaving the background unwaxed. I also splattered some areas with dots of wax. After the wax had set I used aother layer of dye paint in a darker color, adding navy to anything seamed to work for me. I used a dark green, navy, a red+navy nice dark purple. It was amazing to watch as the background color got darker and the designs with wax stayed in the same bright colors that I had waxed over. The magic of batik! Contrast was more important than color, you need something dark at the end, so your design will stand out. Laying the pieces out to dry at this point, was a mistake! The sun had gotten hotter, and melted the wax. What a sticky mess!! I moved everything into the shade to dry. I couldn't wait to see what it all looked like with out the wax.

Adventures in Dyeing, part I

Adventures in dyeing, part one.

I was very excited about going to our Fyber Cafe fabric Dyeing workshop at Vera's. She is our dyeing guru, mentor and retreat center. Once each summer for the last three years our textiles group has gone to her place for a dyeing workshop. I kew I wanted to try soy wax batik, like I had seen in Quilting Arts magazine, issue 35, Oct/Nov 2008. I ordered the wax from Dharma and collected supplies for stamping, in my kitchen and at the Dollar Store. I got cookie cutters, pastry wire blender, thread spools, and other tools to make marks with the wax. I searched and searched for an electric skillet. I made a mad dash one morning to all the local thrift stores and Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. No luck. :-( In the afternoon I went back to the SPCA thrift shop that had been closed in the morning, and found just what I wanted. $5, almost new, mid sized, not gigantic. It would fit two aluminum bread loaf pans with melting wax. I had intended to use Bee's wax in one, and Soy wax in the other, and to try both. However the soy wax had a much lower melting temperature, so I used that exclusively.