Went to turn on the lights in my chilly studio this morning, and saw this: totally frosted windows! I don’t think it has been that cold here before since we moved in. Temps this morning have warmed up two degrees to -2, wind chill now only -15. At least this is pretty!

OK…so I’m working on a new quilt, and nothing on the shelf was quite right, plus I really wanted the sheen of silk for the water.  That meant it was time to bring out the dye-buckets and implement some of what I learned in Carol Soderlund’s Think Silk workshop last April.  I knew that I wanted deep blue water with glints of moonlight on it, so I checked my dye swatches and found I wanted a color made of Navy dye and a tiny tiny bit of red.  In my stock of dyes, I had two containers of Navy, one from ProChem (with hardly any dye in it…not enough really for the yardage I wanted to dye) and one from Dharma Trading, so I used the latter though it was old–there was plenty of it, so if I used a high percentage of dye to water, I could still get the deep values I wanted.  Right.

This photo shows cotton on top (overdyed) and silk on the bottom.

This close-up of the top fabric is washed out because of the camera flash, but it shows how PURPLE the cloth became…from navy dye from Dharma.

It took a while to figure out what went wrong….I was getting way too much red!  I KNEW I was using the proper method to fix the dye to the silk:  an acid bath using citric acid (not soda ash as on cotton).   I thought at first that the purplish color was because my Dharma navy was old and the red was doing what Procion MX reds do:  overpower.  So I tried a second dyebath with ONLY the Dharma navy.

Round 2 of dyeing. Nice, but not what I wanted. Yet.  The long strip on the right is close, but that is the cotton.  The black shibori on the far left is an overdye of a black dye-vat I did in the Think Silk class, but hated the green cast from the dye (YUK).  Better now.  The center top is a scrunch of cotton, where I over-dyed the original cotton because it was too purple.  The silk on the bottom center is an overdye of one of the first two pieces of silk, again to cover up that purple.

So I dyed with ONLY the Dharma Navy, and I STILL was getting purple.  Then I noticed that the dye powder, when it touched a paper towel, had RED specks in it!  I had thought the Dharma Navy was the same as the ProChem Navy.  NOT.   The ProChem Navy is a pure dye, meaning it won’t split or “halo” red or any other color, whereas the Dharma Navy is a mix of pure dyes.  AH!   Light bulb flipped on!  There’s nothing wrong with the Dharma dye, it’s just not what I wanted or thought I had–I thought the “navy” was a pure dye, not a mix.  Now I know to check more closely!

The striping is OK, but TOO much purple still showing. Silk (left) and cotton (right). I wet out the cloth with plain water, then “pleated” by hand into tucks. Next, use a sponge paintbrush to brush on the dye, trying to keep white bits.  And this was my last piece of sandwashed satin silk.  Erk.

Close up of purple halo-ing from the red in the Dharma Navy (a mix, not a pure dye I learned).

It took about 2 yards (OUCH, kaCHING) to get exactly the color I wanted.  Plus on my first go-round, the print paste or the cold wax resist (which I had used to preserve some white areas for moonlight glints) mix did not want to leave the fabric.  I called ProChem’s technical staff (LOVE that business) and spoke with one of the chemists, who confirmed my suspicions about the navy dyes.  She told me that the manufacturer had offered the navy mix to them, also, but they wanted the pure dye so folks like me would be happy and not get “splitting”.  She also suggested using Metphos, a water softener that is one of the ingredients in Calgon water softener, to try to remove the stiffness I was getting from the print paste and/or cold wax resist.  Some of that stiff feeling went aweay, but on another test, I still couldn’t get it out of the silk, so I’m glad that when I got to my last piece of silk, I opted for careful painting of dye!

After speaking with Nancy at ProChem (waving hello!), I then took out my small remaining bit of ProChem PURE navy and went back in to the last piece of silk and tried one more time. FINALLY! Some purple still shows, but I can knock that back when I go in with the quilting thread. PHEW!

I also wanted some specific deep-dark hues for another part of the quilt, and my batiks were too contrasty.  What to do?  Paint!  I tried both acrylic inks and Setacolor paints thinned with water and settled on a Setacolor to darken this black-and-charcoal:

Charcoal and black batik with the contrast minimized by a thinned coat of blue-and-black Setacolor paints thinned, mixed and applied to the cloth.

And a lighter mix of  blue to gray and darken this lighter batik:

And a lighter wash on the “rice grain” gray batik. As the cloth came from the bolt it is too bright, too distracting. This muted over paint is just right!

Some folks love the hunt for the perfect fabric.  Not me.  I am too busy and stores are too far flung.  And I don’t want THAT much stash!  I’d rather get a good selection, then modify when I can and dye my own when I can’t!  Next on the fix-the-studio agenda:  a deep sink in the basement so I don’t have to dye in the kitchen.  The bathrooms are too small, and I don’t want the dye in  the food prep area!  So if there are any guilds out there that would like to hire me for 2014 and 2015, I’d appreciate the donation to the studio-improvement cause! <GRIN>

I had a few extra bits that I dyed at Think Silk, but that needed wash-out and ironing at home, so here they are:

OK…so Tyger isn’t really part of the class, but this was too cute not to share. Of course, I could say that his coat is a perfect inspiration for some shibori!  He was watching me as I was petting the samples…..

Two pieces of blue shibori, one that began wet, one that began dry. Don’t actually see much difference in these, tho there can be. These were wrapped too tightly for me…too much white. So I shall re-do, perhaps wrapping in the other direction, and overdye with a different blue. The piece on the right is that black. Too bad it was black. May be too dark to overdye, and I dislike discharge. Erk.

Silk noil is a fairly heavy cloth, about like Kona cotton, maybe a bit heavier. This was a stitched / gathered resist. Again, more white than I like. Overdye is my new middle name!

This is why it is good to practice on small pieces of cloth. Love the colors; love the chevron pleating/patterning. Hate the blotchiness. Can you say overdye? Or cut up into small bits!

Cotton (?) cord…LOVE these colors! It was the cord I used to tie the previous sample. Use EVERYthing!  I think this is synthetic cord, actually, but it took the color because we used an acid bath method…. nifty!

My favorite piece of the whole thing: silk organza, stitched in a leaf shape to create a tight resist, then dyed. I can see small pieces like this with either stitched or soy wax resist working their way into my quilts! This one is small, maybe 4 x 7 inches total.

 

Back in April, which now seems like years ago, I FINALLY got to take a class I’ve wanted to take for several years now:  Carol Soderlund‘s dyeing silk class.  Any time she has been teaching within driving distance of Maine, I’ve been booked to teach elsewhere.  So even though this class required me to get home from teaching in Arkansas on Friday then get back in the car and head South on Monday, I jumped at the chance!

Round 1, dyeing silk yellow

As always with Carol’s classes, it was fun, packed with learning, tiring, and did I say fun?

First round of overdyeing

Mooshing. That’s a technical term! In this case, mooshing in the blue dye….the third round!  And even WET the colors are heavenly

My dye partner stacking our colors

A classmate was experimenting with stamps and thickened dye

At Quilt Festival two years ago, Melanie Testa demonstrated using an old-fashioned ruling pen (like for drafting plans in art school) with thickened dye. I tried it, and you can see a sideways of my Queen Anne’s lace. I “inked” the outlines with dye, then will overdye and color later….maybe later this summer?

We also got to try some shibori, alas with black. I’m not wild about the color, but maybe I’ll overdye with some blue and get a nice water fabric out of this… I do like the texture, just not the color. Bleah.

We also got to try some deconstructed screen printing. A neighbor did this one… she definitely had the best colors and results… I’m not much for “surface design” stuff, but this was a great cloth!

Another really good desconstructed screen print. I lust after that huge screen!

Lunch at the back of the classroom. ProChem brings in lunch–it is included in the class fee. We all sit together and pop up and down as need be to tend our fabric!

And one more time I went by 266 Third Street, Fall River, Mass., where my dad and his family lived in 1918! So glad it is still there. I may try to find where they lived in 1910 via the census and go find that house, too… my Aunt Mary lived in that house (on the first floor apartment) until she died in the 1970s!

As always, I had a great time, ate too much, and wish I had more time at home to dye fabric!  Maybe this winter?

We were treated to a spectacular Arizona sunset while staying at Monument Valley, and an almost as wonderful sunrise.  These photos were taken from The View Hotel, third floor–and note, reservations are ESSENTIAL…book EARLY.  These photos are taken (duh) looking West, over the parking lot…in the first photo you can barely spot the glimmer of a car up and to the left of the (c) symbol:

And sunrise, looking (duh) to the  East over Monument Valley:

(Notice the photographers set up on the stairs, on the left, by the restaurant…the best spot to get the classic shot of both “mittens” which you can see in this photo, above.)

OH do these photos make me want to play with cloth and dyes!

The next exercise in Dijanne Cevaal’s lino-cutting class (link to her blog in the Reading category in the left sidebar) was to create positive and negative images using the same basic drawing.  I created two 4 1/2 x 9 inch blocks (about 10 cm by 22 cm):

For the exercise, we were to leave the background of the negative block untouched.  I think now that the exercise is done, I’ll carve something interesting into parts of the the large flat spaces in this one.

I did my first prints in a combination of metallic and Jacquard textile paint onto a length of my hand-dyed fabric:

I then used the turquoise-teal paint that I liked so much from the 12×12 print:

These prints I really liked!  So much so, that I decided to make two quick art quilts, one of which is being donated to the FiberArt For A Cause (FFAC) fundraiser to benefit the American Cancer Society (which in turn supports cancer research).  My dad had and survived throat cancer, my half-brother and a dear friend died of different cancers, and dad and my husband have had skin cancer(s), and my mom may (?) have colon cancer (if she does, it is VERY slow moving–she wouldn’t do the tests to confirm or rule out, and the doctor diagnosed her over two years ago, so I’m thinking she doesn’t, but we just don’t know).  So… I am happy to once again support the FFAC.  Go here to learn more.

I’ll share the quilts in the next post!