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.