Play Day (with Dyes)

I am still in dealing with the aftermath of my move mode, but I took a break yesterday for a Shibori play date with the guild's Surface Design mini-group.  I haven't yet washed out all of my pieces–I dyed cotton fat quarters, silk scarves and a straw capeline (which will become a hat soon)–but, here is the first.

What do you see in this arashi shibori? 

Common answers of the day were petals, yucca plant, dragon or alien skeleton.

There is a nice tutorial for shibori here:

Shibori-DIY

For our workshop, we used an indigo-colored procion dye.

This (and getting settled into the new place) is my work-in-progress this week. Like Lee, there will also be painting.

My sewing space is still unpacked (and I still cannot find the box with the sewing essentials like scissors and needles in it).  Right now, the cats are spending more time there than I am.

And the design wall is still just a piece of insulation ...

They are checking out the neighbors. Isn't he a beauty? 

   

The Risk of Working From Stash

A not-so-funny thing happened when I started with some hand-dyed fabric from my stash for the background of this quilt–my choice for July's Lovely Finish in #aLYoF...

I thought I'd have enough for a 40 by 60-inch crib-size quilt.  The fabric closely resembles the real-life summer skies in New Mexico and I really wanted to use it. I chose yellow-orange and red-orange fabrics for the bird blocks because I've never met a split-compliment color-way that I didn't like.   I put a handful of bird blocks together and started designing on the wall ...

and then, I ran out of background fabric.

I was reminded of why I like scrap quilts.  If the background had been made from a bunch of turquoise fabrics, it would have been easy to add one (or a bunch) more to finish the design ... but since I had used a single fabric for the background, I was stuck.

I considered filling in the background with turquoise and white 4-patches, but just couldn't quite get on board with the idea.   I started to thinking about dyeing more fabric and wondering if there was any chance I could create a good enough match to the color and texture.  This morning I decided I had nothing to lose by trying.

I pulled out some old dyes and my dyeing supplies. I dyed four fat quarters in a subtle gradation to attempt to match the color and one yard, tightly packed in the yogurt contained on the left to attempt to match the cloud texture in the original.


For me, it wasn't exactly like riding a bike–probably because there isn't a lot of muscle memory involved. Frieda Anderson's book, Fabric to Dye For, provided the basic measurements.

I confess that my goal wasn't just to create some matching fabric ... I also wanted to replace some of the turquoise fabrics I'd stolen from another work in progress for the bird quilt.   The value gradation of fat quarters I created will be perfect for that other project.

The one yard piece of tightly scrunched fabric didn't match the original texture ... but I think it's going to be good enough.

Below the quilt-in-progress is laid over the new yard of fabric. Even though the dye was VERY old, the color match is great ... and once the new fabric is chopped up and sewn, I hope it won't be that discernibly different than the original.

Opening up my dyeing supplies has been a bit like opening Pandora's box ... dyeing is so satisfying, I'm already planning what I want to dye next.  It's no coincidence, I think, that this quilt has me thinking about creating a set of fabrics with colors gradating from turquoise to orange.

Carrots, Potatoes and Other Found Objects

Did you guess what the potatoes and carrots were for?



They were used as stamps in a Batik workshop with Malka Dubrawsky . . . along with bell peppers, potato mashers, cardboard tubes and rectangle "stamps" and a few traditional wooden and copper stamps for batik. These are the fabrics I patterned in the workshop.

It was a great break during the unpacking and I know I want to do more of this.  It was so much fun.

Discovering Mudcloth

I made this virtual mudcloth at the Smithsonian's site, Discovering Mudcloth. Three interesting artists who create, work with, or are inspired by mudcloth are featured.

Playing With Dyes Again

As I explained to a frustrated fiber artist at the dye workshop on Saturday morning, the results of my first ever trip to Days to Dye For at Alice Brinkman's studio were so spectacularly disappointing that now I come with low expectations. It allows me to play (and often fail) as I learn and experiment with new processes and chemistry. Here are the results of my most recent efforts.

Saturday we focused on pole wrapped shibori methods. I brought back the once purple scarf that I'd discharged last fall with the intention to overdye it--I expected the navy dye to be darker, but I think it's moving in the right direction.

I also overdyed a hand-dyed yellow fat quarter--I think this is going to make great tropical leaves.



I'd recently seen some fabulous shibori socks on Flickr and had to try some of my own. I went on a last minute hunt for white 100% cotton socks on Friday night ... and came to the studio with low expectations. I think these need more color, but have possibilities.



I think everyone in the studio on Saturday wished we'd had more time to wrap and dye and add more complexity to some of our pieces ... I came home thinking I needed to make my tiny space workable as a micro dye studio and work in a less distracting environment. I also decided I needed Karren K Brito's book on Shibori. I often love my accidental results and really should figure out how to reproduce them ...