Play date with Beth

Saturday I had a wonderful play date with Beth.  We were trying some variations of soy wax and thickened dyes.  One of the great things of having a play date with Beth is that we start at the same place and end up in totally different locations. You'll need to go to Sew Sew Art to see Beth's material which is totally different from mine.

Our first experiment was to draw with the soy wax on our silk screens and then to use the thickened dyes with the screens.  I drew a zentangly type thing with the wax.  I chose to use a variety of color dyes and to screen them using a credit card.  Here is the gorgeous fabric that was produced and three detail shots.  The fabric is a little over a yard long and the entire width.  I am definitely going to play with this technique some more.

The second experiment was stamping with soy wax and then applying the thickened dye with a credit card again.  The experiment part of this trial is that I layered fabric. I got the idea from this post.  I love the green bottom layer.

I am not as happy with the top layer.  It isn't bad but it needs another layer.

 

The bottom piece I stamped with a large circle and then dyed with yellow and greens.  Then, without waiting for the dye to dry,  I layered another piece of fabric over the green dyed fabric.  On the top fabric I stamped wax with a smaller circle and then dyed with blues and an orange on the edges to darken it.  If you compare the two pieces, you will see that the colors, the wax, and the circle pattern transferred between the two.

Here are some detail pictures of both pieces. Both finished pieces have the two different sizes of circles.

I have shared this post on Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

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.

Batik Play Date

Saturday Beth and I got together and did some soy wax batik. These two are about 13 inch squares of dupioni silk that I batiked using acrylic ink.

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!

Five Playdate

Three of the FIVE got together this weekend and  played with a faux batik method using soy wax and textile paints.  Beth has a tutorial for the technique on her blog.  She is in love with the technique and I must say, with see-through fabric, I adore it too, but love is a bit more restrained when it comes to heavier weight fabrics.

Let me show  you first the see-through piece.  Isn't it fabulous? And believe me, it is even  better in person.

The other batiks are a bit muddy  looking to me.  Perhaps it is because I started out with a light blue dupioni silk.  Perhaps I am just not comfortable with my mark yet.  Margaret said it took her  a while to get comfortable with the marks she made--kinda like gettting used to the sound of your voice on a recorder or the picture someone takes of  you.  And perhaps I just need more skill at mixing marks and colors.  Anyway, here are the pictures. 

This one is of the back of the fabric.  I did not take a picture of the front.  Every paint I used in the 4 layes was a metallic.  The front is so reflective it just hurts my eyes.  Lesson learned--one layer of metallic is glittery (good) but all layers of metallic is reflective (bad).

 This one has only  one layer of metalllic paint and I like the sheen much better.  The marks...well that is another story.  The blue squiggles you see are the original color of the fabric  perserved by soy wax.

 In this fabric there is a huge difference between the front and the back--we were using paints rather than dyes.  I folded the fabric so you could see the difference.  I didn't do that for the fabric above because the paints were more watered down so the front and the back are much more similar.  Another lesson learned.  I don't think there is necessarily a right and wrong on this lesson--it would all depend on the effect you wanted.  Another lesson I learned with this is that working with that orginial blue by staying in the same color family works better than trying to make it turn green or purple like I did in the previous pieces.

 These last two pictures are just details of the front and the back.  I  like this fabric. The marks on it are less distinct and blend better for me.  I like that.

Friday Favorites

Seems like everything this week has come in twos.

Cheryl at Fiber Art and Quilting has two posts that I enjoyed this week.  One is about a new product called Scratch-a-Print and the second is about multi-part printing or faux silkscreening.  The Scratch-A Print and Scratch-Art Mask-Ease are both products made by the same company and are for the silkscreen.  The descriptions of both make them sound really easy--kinda in the fail-safe zone. The prices were low enough at Dick Blick that I went ahead and ordered one of each for myself.  I will let you know how it works for me.  The second posting refers you to an article in Cloth Paper Scissors but Cheryl assures us that the process worked for her on fabric rather than on paper (a GREAT assurance!) and shows us the proof.  In general, Cheryl has a "technique of the week" and is really worth a read.

Debra at Debra's Design Studio sent me over to Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber to see a crumb quilt.  Vicki doesn't explain what a crumb quilt is but the quilt she shows makes it clear that a crumb quilt is really just a scrap quilt.  If that is the case, crumb quilts are one of my favorite ways to quilt.  I love taking little pieces of fabric that are too small to make anything with and sewing them all together to make a quilt top.  Something from nothing!  That surely satisfies my thrifty inner driver.  Nice quilt, Vicki!

Kim at Kim's Hot Textiles had two posts that really got me inspired.  The first is all  about her work named "Capstones."  It starts from the inspiration to the techniques and goes to the finished works. A great read on great work.  The second post that caught my attention had NINE pictures of tortured Lutrador plus a few other fabrics. The results are stunning!  Oh, MY!  I want to see some of my work look like that!  I have some Lutrador at home that I haven't done anything with yet. This weekend is the time.  If you need some more ideas of what to do with Lutrador here is another link to some Lutrador projects.

My last double goody this week is a new DVD that I received on Tuesday and watched Wednesday after work.  Two fabulous artists, Jane Dunnewold and Lisa Kerpoe, produced "Vibrant Color: Combining Soy Wax and Dye for Brilliant Results."  It is 90 minute long and has three ways to use soy wax with dye.  First is crayons and you will need to use Jane's priority soy wax to achieve the right consistency to make the crayons.  WOW!  I love this but probably won't make the crayons.  So many techniques to try and so little time.  Second is how to make the soy wax and dye into a paste that can be used for stenciling. I was not excited by this technique but then stenciling in general is not my thing. Third is using the soy wax and dye as hot wax with dipping, stamping, and using typical batik type methods.  Now this one I will be trying this weekend!  The stamped, dipped, etc fabric needs to be steamed--a method I have not done yet--but Jane and Lisa carefully take you through the steps.   I feel very clear about how to do it successfully.  I will show you some finished fabric using this technique on Monday.