Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Monoprinting again

I'm sorry about the lack of posting yesterday. That book review was supposed to post yesterday but I have been calendar deficient lately and scheduled it for today instead.

Oh well.

I didn't notice it yesterday because Estelle and I were in the basement all day for one of our TED (technique exploration) days. Yes, we did monoprinting last month but I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it again and make more bases for postcards.

Monoprinting, as we did it, is printed on a glass surface. I have some old window sashes that I use. They are big and give me a huge area for a work surface which makes cleaning up a breeze. I intended to take some process photos but completely forgot. I promise to do it in the future but the basic process is to paint on the glass, create some texture in the paint, possibly add a mask and then lay the fabric face down on the paint to get the print. I use a brayer to roll the fabric to the glass surface

Now these are the starts of postcards. They will get lots of stitching and embellishment to spice them up. I used hand dyed fabric for the backgrounds on all of them. The stars were printed twice. I printed the red waves first and then printed the light blue. I got the stripes by scraping the edge of corrugated cardboard through the paint. I free form cut stars for the masked shape.

The hearts were done by laying down the pink paint and stamping in it to remove some paint. Then I used hearts cut from paper for the mask. I used the same process for the group of trees that will become a Christmas postcard.

The flower was done by using  a foam stamp to remove some of the paint.

Now I need to start stitching!

Monoprint postcards

A few weeks ago Estelle and I got together for another of our TED (technique exploration day) days. This time we tried monoprinting. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of what we did but I'll get some when we get together later this month to do more.

Given my dislike for gelatin printing you would thing that I would not care for monoprinting on glass. But I really liked it/ With glass you can get the texture of the brush and that's just enough for me. This time I just focused on playing with technique. One thing I did was paint on the glass and then remove some of the paint with foam stamps. It took a lot of tries to get some good images but it finally worked and I made these postcards with my test pieces.

I stitched wiht Superior Threads Razzle Dazzle in the bobbin and added some crystal highlights. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Custom Dyed Gradients

One of my favorite things about dyeing fabric is getting a request for something custom. Occasionally I am unable to do do what they want, but when it comes to custom dyed gradients I can usually meet the challenge.

Here's one I just finished last week. Barbara sent me that narrow strip from a commercial print gradient and I created this hand dyed version that closely approximated the colors.

These custom order can take a while though. Sometimes I need to go through a couple of dye cycles to test blends to get the colors just right.

I can also create gradients oriented lengthwise. In January I created a 3 yard version of Blue Sky with the customer specifying exactly where he wanted the darkest color offset from the center gradating to the palest colors at the cut edge. He's using it as a background for a 6' aquarium.

 

The most interested lengthwise gradient that I've done so far is for this spectacular quilt made by Cheryl and her sister, Joyce. Cheryl is a wonderful longarm quilter and she and Joyce split duties on this one. Cheryl sent me some swatches of the reds and blues and I created the gradient that she used on the border. By dyeing the gradient along the length of the fabric she only had to make 4 cuts for that simple-to-piece border. You can read more about the quilt on Cheryl's blog.

If you have made something with my fabric I'd love to see it. You can send photos to me or upload them to my customer Flickr group. Once a month I draw a name from the entries and that person gets a 3-month 25% shop discount.

 

Shibori dyeing

Estelle and I got together recently for another technique day. This time we did some pole-wrapped shibori. It was so much fun that we are going to do it again next month! Here are some of our fabrics.

We dyed all of our fabrics twice. In one batch we first dyed orange and then dark red.  All of these first fabrics were dyed in the orange/red baths. This was a teal fabric that Estelle brought.

This is a fabric that I wrapped around a bucket. It was a little unweildy to wrap and that gave it some very interesting.

Estelle wrapped both of these around small poles and she got a cool snakeskin texture. The one on the right was a yellow fabric dyed in the orange/red bath. The one on the left was dyed in the other bath. In that one we first dyed black and then turquoise.

This started as a pale lavender fabric. Between each bath we would move the folds around to open some new areas to take dye.  The turquoise dyed in those exposed areas.

This is my favorite piece. It started as a light green fabric and has some great patterned areas with the wrapping.

A few little dye projects

Today I'm sharing a few little projects that I've been doing in the dye studio. 

First is a new product. 

You know that I love to make placemats and to dye napkins to match. I use a lot fo the napkins that my friend, Cindy, picks up for me at estate sales. But sometimes I either want something bigger or I need more than is available in one style. So I started looking for another source and found these on eBay. The seller is georgiatowels and they have different restaurant and hotel supplies. Because the sell in such large quantities I contacted them first about the dyeability of their napkins. She wasn't sure so she offered to send me a couple ot test.

Since she sent me 2, I pre-washed one and dyed the other just as I received it. I think it's clear from this photo that these napkins do not need to be scoured/pre-washed. They are very heavy and thick napkins so they require more dye, but they take the color beautifully. The stitching is done in polyester thread so it doesn't dye, but for about .50 each, I'm fine with that! So, if you are looking for napkins to dye, this is a great source.

I've been dyeing some other things too. A while back Cindy gave me a big stack of these linen cocktail napkins. Anne used a lot of them in November to stamp some cocktail napkins for gifts. I had a few that were pretty stained so I decided to dye them dark burgundy. Then I screen printed some leaf images and now I have a set of cocktail napkins that will be a nice hostess gift for someone. Cost: $0.00. :)

If you pay attention to my Fabric Palette photos you know that a lot of them come from my friend Gabriela.  In December she hosted me for a day and taught me all kinds of things about making cards. For that and for the use of her latest photo, I wanted to make her some silk ribbons to use in her cards.

I bought 10 yards of 1/2" ribbon from Silk Ribbons 4 You on Etsy. I cut it into several smaller pieces and was going to dye them but thought that painting them would be easier. 

I watered down a bit of Tsukineko ink and poured it on the ribbon. I left the ribbons messy in the ink because I wanted textured color.

That's what I got. Beautiful testured color!

I also dyed a bunch of ric rac for her. I hope she will be able to use some of these in her beautiful cards.