Play Date with Beth

Beth and I got together on Saturday for a wax and dye day.  Beth wanted to try a technique she found here on Edwina Mackinnon's blog.  Beth had fallen in love with the brush marks on the finished fabric. 

 She read and re-read the blog to figure out how it was done, prepared the brushes, mixed the dyes, and sent me the instructions.  I showed up. What a slacker! Beth will post her own results but here is my process and result.

I started out with a yard of white cotton fabric, pinned it on Beth's dye board, and spritzed it with soda water.

 I brushed the fabric with lemon yellow, golden yellow, turquoise, and basic blue.  I tried to leave white spaces and brush with a light stroke to leave brush marks.  I added some blue splatters for interest.

Here is a close up.
There are no pictures for the next couple of steps. We wrapped our dyed fabric in plastic and let it batch for hour.  Then we draped the batched fabric over a drying rack, turned on multiple fans, and let the fabric completely dry.

If you look really, really close, you can see the wax stripes that I have brushed on the dyed, batched, dried fabric.  I used a foam brush that Beth had notched.

Next step was to coat the dyed, batched, dried and waxed fabric with thickened dye.  I was going to only use Fuchsia but I ran out and Beth had leftover Navy Blue so I used some of it too.  I thought it would add some lovely depth.

Once again we wrapped the fabric in plastic and batched.  And there are no pictures of my washing and washing out all of that dye, hot-water rinsing to get the wax out, washing it in the washing machine, drying it in the dyer, and ironing it.

But here are the finished results--one large and several small detail shots showing all the brush stokes.  I am in love!  I think it is the best fabricI have ever done.

My voice and Friday Favorites

I have been having an on-going hunt for my voice.  You know, that distinctive something that when people look at a quilt they will be able to say, "OH!  That is a Jdemilo quilt."  or "That is similar to what Jdemilo does."  I am told in various blogs that my voice should be unique (have they seen ALL the different types of stuff is out there???), not a derivative (as in completely unlike anyone else--have they seen ALL the quilters out there????), and is something coming from inside (think of a baby during labor). Well, I have found for my voice.  My voice says that the task is too great for me.  Instead, my voice says,  I am going to concentrate on what I like.  Can you hear my voice?  LOL  For more opinions on voice, check out Jane Dunnewold or David duChemin.

Friday Favorites
There were lots of lov-er-ly things out there this week like Terry Jarrard-Dimond sharing her hand dying process and Penny Berens's great hand-stitched circles.  But I am focused on scrap piecing.  Not granny's crazy quilt but something with some composition to it that uses scrap fabrics. 

Here is what I found this week that will allow me to use up tons of fabric I need to get rid of AND still create some art.

Busy Weekend

Ten yards of fushia gradations to add to my stash for Nancy Crow's Workshop

Old copper pipes wrapped in modant-soaked cotton waiting to get buried in my compost pile.  Results in a month.

Black Magic Rainbow

It took me 2 weeks to get all the fabric ironed that Rosalita and I dyed but here it is, minus the yellows that I accidently left at Rosalita's.  We dyed 45 yards ( 5step value gradation of 9 colors) following the directions in Hand-Dyed Fabric Made Easy by Adriene Buffington. The book is out of print but you can find it used online.  The Black Magic Family begins with a weak dye solution, moves to a strong dye solution, and then starts adding black for the dark tones.  The directions are for 10 steps but we only dyed the even steps. 

Now I am going to pack it away for my Nancy Crow workshop the first week of May.

Tie Dye Onesies

I asked and asked my daughter what to get for her son for Christmas.  Finally she suggested that I dye him some onesies.  What a marvelous idea!!  Here are my first two.

Hand dyed embroidery thread and another Goodwill Find

Here are 5 of the about 12 bundles (what is the right word??) of yarn I dyed in my dark gradations.  It is lovely.  I am already using several of them in my quilt for Interpret This!

This is an ice cube tray found at Goodwill that is going to be used to make soy wax blocks for rubbings.  Won't that be fun!

Friday Favorites

Friday Favorites are late this week because I was so busy having fun dyeing with friends!  No apologies.

Wen Redmond, who is one of the SAQA Coordinator for my region, has  posted this awesome article on making collages.  I want to try this technique with the Five.    It ties in nicely with Jill's post below.

The Quilt Rat posted a great review of TAP.  Doesn't seem like a product that I need to go out and immediately buy. That so totally works for me since I have already spent my quilt/art budget for the month.  My budget always seems to be spent by the 3rd or 4th day of the month. Then by the 15th of the month I am starting to eat into my grocery shopping budget to buy those things that just can't wait till the next month's shopping spree.  Dear Hubby will be happy not to have to eat bread and water at the end of this month (for a change).

I'll give you the link to Dark Gradation again.   I posted my dark gradation results yesterday and later today or tomorrow I will show you some of the embroidery thread I dyed at the same time.  It is luscious. 
The link to dark gradation led  me to the Lazy Dyer.  The lazy dyer tells you all the shortcuts that she takes in dyeing and that do not seem to make a difference. They were a good read.  I have tried several different recipes for how much of this and how much of that to add.  I am starting to develop my own preferences now. Wooo Hooo!  maybe there is hope for me to become more than an accidental dyer.

I know that I have loved other stuff this week.  It seems like I have learned a lot this week. But let me end with a quote from Margaret's blog that I love.  

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass....it's about learning to dance 
in the rain"  ~ Anonymous

Dark Gradation

Beth found a great blog on dark gradations so that is what we did on our Five playdate Thursday.  Here are my results in fabric.  I also dyed some embroidery floss but it is still rinsing.

Dyeing Silk with ties

 At our last play group we dyed silk using men's ties.  We followed the directions in the latest Quilt Arts magazine.  It worked.  It worked amazingly well.  You can even see the seam up the back of the ties printed on the fabric.  I can't image what I would do with this technique but if I can figure out a use, I know how to do it!

How much rice is in your bowl?

Here is my entry for the Art for Hunger exhibition in Augusta, November 1-19.  All pieces are for sale for $50.   Size limit was 5 inch squares so the hand dyed black cotton is 5x5.  It has organza circles machine appliqued and hand embroidered "rice."  It is sewn to a mat of high rag content paper and is hung on two chop sticks.

Playing with Flowers

Yesterday I took a day off from work and joined Beth and Rosalita in their Thursday play date. They had invited two more eager experimenters to join them, Kathy and Charlene, so there were 5 of us around Rosalita's table.  One of the projects we tried was dyeing with flowers.  Beth had tried it the night before, carefully following the directions Yvonne gave in her post on Fibre Heart. Faint yellow cotton.  That is all that Beth got.

 I was undetered and wanted to try again, maybe playing with the directions a bit (Who?  ME?   Not follow directions?? LOL)  So, using more alum and wrapping the cloth tighter, here are the results of my two attempts. 

The roses gave me very faint leaves and color (thank you Beth and Rosalita for sacrificing your flowers).  Not unpleasant but a lot of work for little color and pattern.  If you look close you can see the leaves.

But the mums! (thank you for the sacrifice, Rosalita!) The dark red mums turned a surprising blue/purple.  I would love to try the mums again!

If one morning your mums are in full bloom but by evening, the bush is bare....I don't know what could have happened to them. Tee Hee

Friday Favorites

I have a couple of little projects I want to share but I can't find my camera.  Cross your fingers that I can find it soon.  I am still working hard on my entry for the SAQA show at the NEQM (enough initials for ya?) but I did relax with some blog surfing this week.  I found some things that made my heart feel good.

This one is a 2fer containing some comments about thermofax and then going on to Lynn Krawczyk's Fabric Making Freedom Song.  The Freedom Song contains the top ten reasons why Lynn prefers handprinted fabric to commercially printed fabric.  All I can say is OH YES!

Once I identified that my fiber art voice contained hand worked threads, I have been having dreams of flying.  That to me represents great joy and freedom that I feel in my discovery.  A confirmation!  So now I have been looking for fiber blogs that have handwork associated with them.  I was really surprised to find how many of the blogs I already follow are in that category. (That was kind of a DUH moment)  Here is a new one that I have found and have started following posted by Sarah Whittle.  Not that I am new to embroidery but I can always learn something new!

JaneVille sent me over to Lyric Kinard for a tutorial on beaded fringe.  While I was there, I saw a button for tutorials.  Lyric has more tutorials.  I love tutorials!  Everyone does a technique a bit differently and when I read or see different tutorials on the same technique,  it helps me understand the technique better.  You know, what it will do under this circumstance and that.  THAT helps me determine how I want to use the technique in MY work. Anyway, according to Beth from Sew Sew Art, Lyric makes the best thermofax screens, if you are interested in ordering any.

One more happy blog before I go back to sewing. LuAnn at May Your Bobbin Always Be Full gives some great details on her flour paste resist experiments.  I won't remind you of my disaster the one time I tried it.  I do want to try it again.  I am sure the failure was simply my stress and technique. Anyway, take a look at LuAnn's technique if you are interested.

Some of my dyeing from the weekend

Okay, I did not get everything done over the weekend that I had on my list.  But I am really, really happy with the stuff I did get done!  The rest is moved to my list for my next free weekend.

The IT quilt is coming right along. (Can't show you) 

My ATC cards for my trade are started and looking good. (Won't show you till they are done)

The vase for parfait dyeing was much bigger than expected and I dyed most every piece of white fabric I could find at home.  I think it ended up being about 4 yards.

Here it is filled with all that fabric and, in order from bottom to top, antique gold, deep orange, raspberry, chartruese, ceralean blue, and deep purple dye.

And here are all the results!  Some are wonderful and some are ready for an overdye next free weekend.

New Hand Dyes

I tried waiting till my mother left before I started dyeing but...well...I have never been known for my patience.  So, here are some results.  The first was wrapped around a pipe and dyed--twice.  I love the green but for my monthly IT! project I needed a bit more white.  You can see more white on the piece on the right that I sprinkled with bleach.  That great red stripe up the middle is just the red table cloth showing between the two pieces of fabric.

The second one is a cotton piece that I dyed black.  I was hoping for a bit more texture but it will do.  This is just low water immersion with a really really heavy concentration of black dye.  At that, it still took two dye sessions to get it that dark.

This last piece is a commercially dyed black cotton fabric that I discharged with bleach.  I loved the discharged fabric that Beth gave me so I decided to try and make some more of my own.  Expect to find this in a wall hanging in the near future along with some feathers I collected at the Windsor Fair Poultry barn.

Play date #2: parfait dye and deconstructed silk screen print

I didn't want to print all my deconstructed silk screen onto white fabric so I parfait (jar) dyed some pieces with various shades of pink and purple before printing them.  The purple is hardly noticeable but the pink is definitely loud and proud.  Here are some results with the deconstructed silk screen print on top.

Next post I will show you the results from the gelatin monoprints I made.  The ones I made on the organza are my favorite.

Dye Jar explanation

I have had a couple of questions about jar dyeing.  Like, what is it.  Well, actually the more correct term is parfait dyeing but since I do mine in a jar I called it jar dyeing.  And I am following Judi's example on Approachable Art.  When I do it in a vase perhaps I should call it vase dyeing. Anyway, I am new to the technique and still working to master it so I am not going to give you a tutorial.  I will be happy to connect you to the excellent blogs that have inspired me.

Elizabeth at Enchanted Art has a simple explanation and several examples. Gisela at Art ADD works for me also has some great result pictures. But my favorite is Judi's Approachable Art blog.  Judi does LOTS of dyeing and is great with explanations.  If you want to know more about jar dyeing (AKA parfait dyeing)  I can give you  no better recommendation than to check out her blog and go through her old blogs on dyeing fabric.  You can even show Judi your disastrous attempts and she will come back with a word of encouragement.  (I am just guessing...LOL)  A very generous artist.

Jar Dyeing and a quilt challenge (not from me)

Here is a half-gallon pickle jar full of dye and fabric.  I thought the jar would be perfect for dyeing but not so.  The biggest problem is that the opening is more narrow than the rest of the jar. That meant that the material all nicely scrunched couldn't fit through the opening.  So, I had to put the fabric in the jar little by little.  For me, that was the fatal flaw for the jar.  I won't use it again.  The second problem I had was that I used one yard pieces of fabric and could only fit three in the jar.  That could be overcome with a bigger jar or smaller fabric.  The last problem I had was with the pink dye.  See the lov-er-ly pink dye at the bottom of the jar?  Well, it was dead.  Looked pretty but didn't dye the fabric.

Of the three pieces, I like one of them as is.  

A second one I over dyed with yellow and I like it much better.  Looks kinda like a forest on a sunny day, doesn't it?

The third is overdyed with blue and it still is not ready for public viewing!  All three will get more something later but I am finally satisfied for this step.

And now the quilt challenge, "If you were a quilt, what would you look like?"  Hmmm....what would I look like?  I bit older and raggedy perhaps.  I friend, Bonnie Dyer, from my quilt guild just got published in a book "Vintage Revisited."  There a group of quilters took antique blocks and turned them into modern art quilts.  Maybe that would be me.

My Little Book

Remember when I showed you  the book my friend made using my hand dyed fabric?  In payment she was going to make me a little book of my very own!  Here is my very own little book!

It is all flowers!

Notice the dime so you can realize the size of my little book.

And it is double-sided so you can open it from either end to enjoy the flowers.

Don't forget to go to Interpret This! and get a preview of my May quilt.

A peek at Roots and some Dyed Work

Here is a picture of Roots, my April Reveal for Interpret This!  For more pictures and information about the art quilt, please checkout the blog over there. The one thing I will tell you here is that I am mega impressed with myself.  Okay, the quilt is not perfect and I can find lots of faults in it but I am so excited that it used to be just a plain piece of white fabric.  I designed it.  I dyed it.  I carved a lino stamp.  I printed it. I embroidered.  I quilted.  I thread painted.  I whatever.  It used to be a plain piece of white cloth and now it is an art quilt.  And I did it all myself.   Isn't that just way too cool?

Anyway, on to the reason I started writing this post.  I have been doing some other printing and dyeing the last few weeks.  Here are a couple of the pieces I like the most. ( Like, do you really want to see my failures??)

This piece is a late spring snow dye.  A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday morning it was supposed to rain.  Well, it snowed instead.  Big, huge, wet flakes.  The ground was too warm for them to stick but our cars ended up with about an 1.5 inches on them. " Ah HAH!"  I said, my last chance of the season to snow dye.  I quickly got my wicker laundry basket, put a piece of white fabric in the bottom, covered it with snow, and ran to get my dyes.  Then it occurred to me that I really should have wet the fabric with a soda solution or all the dye in the world would not help.  Hmm... what to do.  Not enough snow to dump and start over.   I mixed a little soda water with a little dye, squirted it all on the snow, and hoped for the best.  I think it turned out pretty well!

This piece stared out as a jar dye project but I did not add enough dye. Way too much white.  So then I folded it and placed some triangle resist shapes on it and overdyed it.  Better but nothing special.  After printing my Roots lino for my Interpret This challenge, I used the leftover dye to print a wooden trivet I had bought for 50 cents.  Ahh...  now I think the fabric is starting to show some promise.