A Weekend of Dyeing

My boss asked me yesterday if I had any plans for the weekend.  I told him I hoped to spend the entire weekend dyeing. 

He heard "dying" and was confused that I seemed so happy with the prospect. 

But I cheerfully hope to dye, discharge, stamp, batik, paint, stencil, and otherwise surface treat fabric this weekend.  I have been checking on tutorials and advice in other blogs on different surface techniques people are using.  Here are some of the recent ones I have found of note.

Alsokaizen at Kaizen's Journey has an awesome blog with lots of good shibori dyeing techniques.  I especially like the tutorial she recently posted on creating a stripe.

Laura West Kong at Adventures of a Quilting Diva tells you how to create masterpieces from boring fabric.  Laura's blog led me to Approachable Art and Judi Hurwitt’s Rescuing Ugly Fabric blog post. Both of these blogs are really good at not only telling and showing techniques but being specific about the products they used and giving you links to the products. Anyway, both blogs tell you how to paint, stamp, and stencil to your little heart's delight.

I was already a fan of Approachable Art and had bookmarked another 2 posts on her blog. This one is about discharging.  Okay, I am still in the learning phase with this technique but it was the first time I had heard of painting and discharging all in one step.  You can bet I am going to be trying this technique this weekend. 

The second technique she has recently blogged about is melting magazine pages. The technique loosens the inks on the pages to turn the pages into lovely abstractions.  Judi shows in several blogs what she has done with the pages.  I wonder if I could use those wet pages as a monoprint onto fabric?  Unfortunately this technique will have to wait--I don't have the proper grease dissolver to try it this weekend.  But I hope to get around to it soon in my surface design experiments.

Have a great weekend!