Field Trips in Fiber

All tied up

I think I have "gotten" tie dyeing. My tyeing was better, my color appliction was better and my color mixing was better - I finally got some light colors! When you watch the tie dye video and they tell you to use flat sinew - LISTEN! It really does make a difference. You can tie a tighter design and the shape holds togther well through the process. I got the ideas for these designs from shirts that I found on an internet search. I might be tie-dyed out for a while though.

These shirts are all patriotic because they are being given this week. Two of them are for 2 boys that are visiting tomorrow night with their parents. Maybe I can even get a photo of them in their shirts. The other 4 are going with Chris to Vermont next week to give to the friends that he will be visiting at Lake Champlain.

Estelle overdyed a bunch of commercial fabrics. She got some excellent results. It's amazing how you can transform an ugly fabric with some dye! I wanted to try some softer colors on unbleached muslin so I did 2 parfait dyes with the leftover shirt dyes. I love the muted colors but I was trying for pastels! LOL! Well, I got one right! Usually dyers are challenged to get dark colors. I have trouble with pastels.

The last thing I tried was this piece. I am really taken with Dijanne's Forest Fabrics so I thought I'd give it a try. It turned out better than I expected but my forest horizon line is a bit drunk and I didn't pleat it right and the yellow is too bright. This is a 1 yard peice so maybe it can be placemats!

For my brother

If you read the comments on the blog you may have seen a comment on the tie dye post last weekend from brother asking me to forward the shirts to him. Flattery gets you everywhere with me if I'm in a generous mood. I was feeling generous and the need to do more tie dye so, Tim, these are for you! They will be in the mail tomorrow.

The tie dye video that I am using is excellent but,as with everything, you have to adjust techniques to your own processes and tools. These allowed me more room for experimenting. My favorites are the mottled blue, the blue/green spiral and the orange/green. I like the colors of the other two but I needed to do the technique a little differently. The funny thing about that orange one is that thing in the middle is supposed to be a arrowhead but it looks like a owl. I couldn't have purposely dyed an owl shape if my life depended on it! But that's an owl for sure. I'm not done with this - I'll be doing lots more, it's just too much fun. I wonder if either of my other brothers would wear them? The oldest already said "no way".

I also did some other dyeing. I have several testing exercises that I am doing and yesterday was a continuation. I did some gradations to confirm if I am mixing my dye concentrates right.

Here are two of the gradations and some other pieces that I made with leftover dyes. I belive these are all going to get some additional techniques. The large peices on the left and botton are asking for some metallic paint touches. Soon I will start a big exploration of color mixing and color-to-color gradations.

One thing I have discovered is that dyeing fabric wears me out! When I have a dye day that's about all I can get done. I didget one more pass quilted on my QOV but that's it and I had to have a nap before I could even tackle that. Today is quilting and mixed media box day.

A Play Date

Today my friend, Estelle, came to spend the day and dye and paint fabric.We had such a good time that we've scheduled another on a couple of weeks. I don't have tons to show you because Estelle took all of her things home. But I do have three things to share with you.

This photo is my fabric testing batch. I have been using a cotton fabric that I get from my local Hancock's Fabrics. I wasn't getting the deep colors that I wanted. I ordered 2 other fabrics to test with it to see if my results would vary. Boy did they! I used the fuchsia, teal and yellow primaries and black and I dyed all 3 fabrics in the same batch so that I would know that they got the same dye mix. The dye was mixed 50% concentrate to 50% water. I considered testing just one color but I think this test shows how important it is to test all of the primaries as they really do dye differently.

The bottom row of fabrics are the ones that I have been using. You can really see the difference! The middle row of fabrics is Dyers Cloth from dyeartist.com and the top fabric is Economy Muslin from Dharma Trading. When I first started looking at these I thought the Dye Artist and the Dharma fabrics were equivalent. But if you look closely at the teal you can see that the Dharma fabric actually took the teal dye better. I think both fabrics are very acceptable but I will likely use the Dharma fabric exclusively going forward. Isn't that black lovely?

 Estelle did a lot of over-dyeing of some really ugly commercial fabrics. I did 2 parfait dyes. This is one of them. The colors are so bright and vibrant. I love them! I will do more soon.

The last thing I did was a total lark. I recently bought Tie Dye DVDs and I watched them this week. I decided to give it a try today. Chris is out of town so I "borrowed" a couple of his white T-shirts. This was harder than I though but it's going to be worth it when he finds these in his drawer Tuesday! I suspect that these will end up in my sleep-shirt drawer. He wouldn't be caught dead in tie dye! Considering that I didn't follow directions very well I think they turned out great.

Tomorrow is longarm and mixed media box day.

Last night and the weekend

Chris is on the beach in South Carolina for 4 or 5 days so I'm on my own - except for the whole "job thing". I wanted to play some last night so I pulled out some ugly fabrics and did some painting. This is the technique that I wrote about in the current issues of Fibre&Stitch. I love doing this! It's so free and easy and fun. If one turns out bad I just add more layers. Here are a few of the pieces that I did. The ones on each end are some faux velvet fabrics that was given to me. Painting them improved them greatly so I know what I will be doing with the rest of them.

I'm really looking forward to the weekend because my friend, Estelle, is coming over tomorrow to play! We are going to dye and paint all day.

Last August I did some testing of different fabrics for dyeing. Since I have refined my whole dyeing proces since then I am going to do another test with 3 fabrics that I have picked for most of my dyeing. The driver of the selection? Price! I can't afford bolts and bolts of $6 fabric for dyeing so I have to find an economical fabric for my dyeing. I'm going to do that this weekend and I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's the list and status from last weekend:

• Finish quilting Kim's quilt - DONE!!!!
• Load and start one of Wanda's QOV quilts - not done yet
• Make 2 mixed media gift boxes - not done yet
• Dye fabric - gradients - DONE!
• Paint fabric with the metallic technique - Done last night!

Here's the new lsit for the next 7 days:

• Deep clean Willie
• Load and start quilting one of Wanda's QOV quilts
• Complete the 2 mixed media boxes - since they are gifts for MAY birthdays!
• Play with Estelle - at least we know I will accomplish this goal!
• Fabric dyeing test

 

The Dye Studio!

Now that the room, using the term loosely, is done I thought I'd give you a little tour! Over the past 2 weekends I've finally gotten everything arranged the way I want – for now. Nothing better shows that I'm a "Function over form" girl than this space. I love free stuff. There's nothing pretty here except for that beautiful new sink. Stop laughing; I think it's more beautiful than a new necklace! If you think of my basement in 4 quadrants, this is the front of the north side of the house. Behind this "room" is the longarm room. I have 2 8 foot work tables in this space. One is perpendicular to the sink and that's where I do my dye mixing and lay out all of the washed containers to dry at the end of the day. When I'm down here working both tables are piled high with CRAP (Creative Resources And Products).

In addition to the dyeing and painting I also moved all of my soap and lotion making supplies to this area. I was doing all of that in the kitchen. Once I found that free microwave (from a friend) it made sense to move everything downstairs. The cart is something that we call a "family heirloom". I think it belonged to my Grandmother and my Mom left it in the guest house when she lived here for 3 months. Underneath are all of my soap-making tools. Between the table and the sink I installed some shelves from old bookcases for my paint and dye supplies. You might be able to see some plastic bags hanging between the sink and shelves. It was a cheap and easy way to store light-weight things like foam plates, mixing cups and bottles.

On the opposite wall is an old laundry hamper to store fabric for dyeing - there are a couple more bolts to arrive this week. The metal shelf is for general storage and the cardboard boxes behind it are for sun printing. I cut them to size and cover them with plastic dry cleaner bags. The brown shelf is an old book shelf that now houses all of my soap and lotion ingredients. In the far corner is a drying rack for my dyed fabrics. Pretty, huh?

Just as Chris placed the microwave on the cart it finally dawned on him – "You now have half of the basement!" Uh, yea, you're quite observant!

What's this? Between the dye studio and the refrigerator where the dye concentrates are stored is some fine expansion space! I wonder what I might need that space for?

Fabric Dyeing and Stash Report

Yesterday I had another fun day of dyeing! It's hotter than hot here and perfect for curing dyed fabrics. I started with some triad dyeing. I did this a while back but wanted to try it using the 2 sets of primaries. The set on the top is done with fuchsia, cyan and yellow – the process primaries. The bottom set is done with light red, cerulean blue and yellow – the pigment primaries. I love the blended colors. Notice that I got the best purple from the process primaries but the best orange from the pigment primaries, proving that I need both!

Here are some of the others that I did with various methods of folding, clamping and dyeing.

 

 

 

 

 

It was lots of fun! Now, none of these are going into the stash count for the week because I'm not done with them. They went back to the dye studio for more "treatments"!

Stash Report

The only activity in the stash this week is that I sent away 3.5 yards of the fabrics that I dyed last weekend. Now that Kim's quilt is done I hope to get one of my QOV quilts completed soon so that I'll have some real stash usage!

The current tally:

• This week IN: 0
• This week OUT: 3.5
• YTD IN: 107.25 yards
• YTD out: 150.5 yards
• NET OUT: 43.25 yards (Goal 100 yards)

Christening the sink (and a stash report)

The stash report is at the end of this post.

I had higher priority projects (Kim's quilt, class samples) and I did work on them some but mostly I dyed fabric this weekend. I had to. The sink was calling. Really, it was!

Boy is my dyeing life easier now! Yesterday I mixed together my dye powders and made one set of fat quarters using each color so I would have reference fabrics. The red, yellow, blue and black fabrics on the bottom row are the standard primaries. The six on the top row are some additional colors - 2 reds, 2 blues, a green and a purple - that I got to try out. I like the reds and blues because they are closer to the red and blue colors that I like to use. I'm not fond of the green but I love the purple. I made those and the backing for my Quilt For an Hour quilt. That's a total of 9.25 yards.

Today I made this rainbow set of fat quarters. These are for someone on the MQResource list. I sponsored a prize in MARCH and am just now getting it done. I'm blaming it on the plumber. Then I decided to do a couple of parfaits. I could easily spend all of my dyeing time doing these - I just love them. The one on the left was done with orange on the bottom, then light red and then chinese red with a bit of purple. I should have made that last layer more purple. The one on the right is done with bright green on the bottom, brilliant blue in the middle and black on top.

Next I wanted to try a gradient. I want to do several sets of these. This one is a gradient of brilliant blue to Chinese red. I love the colors I got from these. I used the left over dyes on a 1 yard piece of fabric that was pleated on the diagonal, twisted and then curled in the container. What you see in this picture is 1/4 of the yard.

Today I dyed 4.25 yards.

I finished off my session in the sink room by painting some paper grocery bags. These are done on two steps. A base color to cover the bag. I wad up the paper while it is wet with paint and then stretch it out without flattening the wrinkles. After the first layer is dry I add a metallic layer of some sort. I used these papers to wrap my soaps - because I don't have anything better to do with my time!

The reason I tracked the the fabric I dyed is because I decided that I have to add my dyed fabrics to the stash too. I won't add the white fabric I stock for dyeing but once it's dyed it goes into the fabric cabinet. I made 13.5 yards of fabric this weekend. Some of this will go out in the mail this week and I'll count that next weekend. I didn't buy any other fabric and that's a big surprise - even to me! I had to go to the quilt store to pick up some fabric for a friend Friday night and I was certain I would buy some fabric for myself. Lucky for me, I guess, I started getting a migraine so I wasn't in the mood to shop. Imagine that!  I even had the excues ready - it was my friend's fault. I wonder if I can play that card another day?

I so want to buy fabric that I'm afraid I am going to soon have a week like Vicky. One day I'm going to come home to a mailbox of fabric resulting from too much "Proceed to Checkout" button pushing! If I do start buying I will not feel guilty. Judy wrote a great blog post about stashing today.

The current tally:

• This week IN: 13.5
• This week OUT: .5
• YTD IN: 107.25 yards
• YTD out: 147 yards
• NET OUT: 39.75 yards (Goal 100 yards)

Can I just insert here at the end that the spellcheck in the new Typepad editor is really, really crappy!

MQX Day 1

It's a miracle! My flight from Richmond to Boston yesterday was on time and uneventful. Not only that, we were treated to nice scenery - a college baseball team.  Then I picked up my luxury rental car - except that I got the 4-door version. Yes, it did take me 15 minutes to figure out that it did not have cruise control or mirror adjustment controls. It's actually a cute little car but it was not designed for people over 40. The speedometer and other displays are in the CENTER of the dash instead of the normal position right in front of the driver. They did not test drive this car with people wearing progressive lenses! LOL! I can't see the speed I'm going without turning my head.

If you've never been to New Hampshire you should visit sometime. The people here are really nice - everywhere!

The MQX show hasn't started yet but classes began today. I am only taking 2 classes and both are with Jessica Schick. I enjoy her energy and you can count on the quality of her classes. If she is teaching something you know that she has fully explored the subject. Today's class was on dye painting. I've done the immersion dyeing but I haven't done any dye painting. I learned a lot which is a good thing because my samples don't really look like I learned anything valuable. Here's what they are supposed to look like.

I got half of the first one done in class and got the painting done on all 4 this afternoon. You know how I get when I'm on a mission. I didn't want to have to bring the supplies home with me. I had enough fixer to finish these 2:

My flowers aren't so bad but the backgrounds are horrid. Here are the last 2, painted but not washed out.

They will lighten up quite a bit when they are washed - but they probably won't lighten up enough. It doesn't matter, it was a great class. Maybe I'll make placemats with these and then I could work on spaghetti and cranberry juice stains to improve them.

Tomorrow is a big day. Summerset and I are going to spend the day with Sue B. Wednesday is my second class with Jessica. We will be painting with Setacolor paints so I will get to freak the whole class out by wearing my respirator all day. I should make lots of friends that day.

Vacation rocks.

Samples from the Monoprinting Class

I finally took some time to do some of my samples for the Monoprinting class that I am taking through joggles.com. I'm not caught up but I did do some things fro lesson 2 on rubbing. I've done rubbing with Shiva paintsticks so I decided to stick with the painting exercise and I'm glad I did. It was difficult to "get".

I tried this last weekend with the Speedball hard rubber brayer and it did not go well at all. It seems that most people use the soft rubber brayer so that's what I used today. In the end I don't think it was the brayer, I think it was operator error!

I started by laying out lots of washers on this old plastic sign and worked on washer imprints on a piece of fabric in orange and yellows that I used to experiment with my metallic painting technique.

This is what I got. I learned:

• 1. that I cant just slap paint on the roller and run it over the piece. That results in a big sloppy mess

2. The paint does need dry a little on the palette before the roller will pick it up and spread it smoothly,

3. I have to paint in slow strokes and in a small area at one time, and

4. It doesn't really matter what you do. If there are enough layers of paint the result will be interesting regardless of the original plan.

The next things I tried were lace from an old shawl and some spaghetti pieces. This piece to the left was just a sample to see if the lace pattern would transfer. The blurry spot is a rose motif in the lace. This worked OK. The pasta did much better.

This piece started as one of my failed metallic technique samples. I painted over it first with a metallic lilac paint on the lace and then used a black metallic over the pasta. That didn't turn out too bad.

This one started as a very yucky brown fabric. I rolled over 5 different layers of the washers starting with black metallic and adding a lighter metallic to each layer. I like how this turned out.

I hate to waste paint so I used all of my leftover paints on this one. Not bad for a waste piece!

I need to get 2 pieces of glass or plexi to do my next sample....maybe next weekend.    

It was a day full of color

In addition to the sun printing, I also did some dyeing and painting today. I had not planned to do any dyeing but then I read a post today from Brenda on triad dyeing and wanted to give it a try. I wanted more "rustic" colors so my red is a blend of fuchsia and light red, the yellow is gold and the blue is a mix of kelly green and turquoise. Usually I squish my fabrics really well in the dye and soda ash mix so that I get even dyeing. This time I wanted it mottled so I did not mix in the soda ash well. I really like the effect.

These next three are different folded effects. The pink and purple one is my favorite.

I even had time to do some more metallic painting. These pieces are now set out to cure until next weekend.

Monoprinting Class - Sunprinting

I am taking Susan Sorrell's Monoprinting class at joggles.com. The first lesson is on sun printing. I've done sun printing before. The last time was during craft week last fall. I wasn't sure I was going to get to do more this weekend but today turned out to be mild and sunny with no wind.

This one was the last one I printed and it's my favorite. I lied together the leftover paints (DyeNaFlow) from the other 3 prints and used cutting from a pine tree for the mask. I'll have to do more with the pine needles, I really like the effect.

Something weird happened in the paint. When I mixed in the leftover yellow into the green it separated into tiny speckles. I love the effect and I know I will probably never get that to happen again.

The orange one is done with buttons. I did some of these last year when I was experimenting. I have a large bag of cheap buttons that I use just for these projects. I think I'd like to do one with thread drizzled over it.

The purple/yellow one is printed with pasta. Usually I just toss the pasta around on the piece but this time I tried to arrange some of it specifically in the yellow areas. I really like pasta as  a mask. It's cheap and there are so many types of pasta for lots of different textures.

I once took apart my used asthma inhaler to see how it works. That gizmo has a lot of parts and some neat gears. I've been saving the parts ever since. I used all of the parts on this piece along with salt. It turned out OK but some of the inhaler pieces really don't work for this technique. I'll save only the good parts from now on.

These were fun, I'll have to do more of them some day.

The trials and tribulations of curing fabric paint

If you aren't interested in painting fabric you can skip this whole post. It will be incredibly boring for you. if you are interested in fabric painting please note:

This post is about my personal and limited experiments with curing fabric paints. Each product has SPECIFIC instructions for permanently setting the product into fabric. I decided to see if I could shortcut the process for myself. if you choose to try any of my methods you need to first test them under your own conditions: fabric, room temperature, iron/dryer/oven temperature and fabric washing process.

As I have been doing my metallic painting samples of the past weeks I have also been testing curing the paints and washing the fabrics. I have only used cotton fabric. I am using two brands of paints: Jacquard and Stewart Gill. In this post I'm not going to compare and contrast the paints - I use them all. I'm just going to talk about making them permanent and washable on fabric. In the Jacquard line I use Textile Colors, Neopaque and Lumiere. In the Stewart Gill line I use True Colour, Colourize, Alchemy, Byzantia, Metamica and Pearlize.

This experimentation started because I did not realize how much work was required to permanently set these paints! The Jacquard products GENERALLY requires ironing on the reverse side of the fabric for 30 seconds. That's 30 seconds for every spot on the fabric. The Stewart Gill paints GENERALLY require ironing 2 - 3 minutes on the back followed by 20 minutes in a 270 degree oven or another 2 minutes of ironing on the front. That would be fine for a small piece but I couldn't bear it for a large piece of fabric or for a garment where ironing might be awkward. So, I started testing......

(I left all of the photos large so that you can click on them to see it as big as possible.)

My first test focused primarily on the Stewart Gill paints because I use them the most. I painted a 1 yard piece of fabric in stripes.

Starting at the top:

Teal in Colourize, Black Pearlize, Gold Metamica, Bronze Byzantia, White Alchemy. Next I painted a wide stripe of Green Colourize  and a wide stripe of Jacquard Fuchsia Dye-Na-Flow. On each of those I painted 3 stripes: Gold Metamica, Bronze Byzantia and White Alchemy.

After drying for 48 hours I cut the sample into 4 pieces. One as the control (untreated piece), one was ironed 30 seconds on the back and front, one was put in the dryer for 80 minutes and one was put in the oven at 270 for 30 minutes. All of these methods are MUCH LESS than the manufacturers recommendation. I took each cured sample and cut it in half washing one set in cold water and one set in warm water.

In the photo the samples are (L to R): original, dryer, oven, iron.

The results:

1. Water temperature makes no difference at all.
2. The Colourize seems to not need any heat setting at all. There was no fading under any of the conditions.
3. Heat setting in the dryer didn't work at all. Only the Colourize sample didn't fade in washing. All of the other paints degraded on the dryer samples.
4. Pearlize performed beautifully with the oven and the iron samples. I estimate that I lost 10% or less of the Pearlize paint in these samples. I lost about 20% in the dryer samples.
5. Metamica and Byzantia performed the next best but lost as much as 40 - 50% in the samples. Oven curing performed best, ironing the next best.
6. Alchemy performed the worst. It requires the most dedication to heat setting. In my samples, I lost most of the Alchemy paints.
7. They all performed the same when painted over the Colourize and Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow

So, no shortcut so far!

Next I found Jacquard Versatex "No Heat" Fixer.  They also have a product called Airfix. I talked to the folks at Jacquard and they told me that the two products are very similar. I decided to try the Versatex with both brands of paint. The directions say:

"If you don't want to heat set your fabric paints then add a small amount (1-3%) of this fixative to your paint. Apply as usual and let sit for at least 5 days before any water exposure. Done!"

I selected 8 of my paints, added a little water (about 20%) and pained one band across the fabric with the paint only. Then I added a drop of Versatex to the remaining paint and painted another band. I left the samples to cure for 5 days. I did NOT iron them. I cut the samples in half and washed and dried one half and then sewed the samples back together. Here are the results.

The Versatex doesn't change the color or texture of any of the paints.

The only one that I can't show you is the Jacquard Neopaque samples. Why? Because I had the brilliant idea to use red Neopaque on dark pink fabric. Nothing shows in the photograph. From the sample results though I can tell you that the Neopaque, like Jacquard Textile Colors, doesn't seem to require any fixative or heat setting at all. It looked the same after washing with or without the Versatex.

This sample is Jacquard Lumiere Metallic Gold. In this particular sample I washed the right half. The top row is painted with the Versatex. You can see that I lost a little of the paint in the untreated sample but the washed side of the paint with the Versatex looks as good as the original.

The next sample on the right is Jacquard Lumiere Halo Blue. In this sample, and all of the remaining samples, the washed portion is the left side. The sample on the bottom is without Versatex and the paint faded quite a bit. Probably as much as 30%. In the treated sample I did lose a bit of color (not as much as it appears in the photo though) but up close it's barely discernible.

The remaining samples are all Stewart Gill paints.

I already knew from the samples above that Colourize didn't seem to require any heat setting at all. This samples shows that the same holds for True Colour. The left side was washed and the top sample is the one with the Versatex added.

The next sample (on the right) is Silver Metamica. The Versatex (top) made a huge difference. I did have a bit of paint loss even in the Versatex treated sample but that might be acceptable for the convenience of not ironing or baking in the oven.

Byzantia performed the same as the Metamica. The Versatex helped considerably. The biggest effect came with the Pearlize and Alchemy, both of which almost completely washed away in the untreated sample.  The Pearlize sample is the first one and the Alchemy is the last one. Both of them are almost completely intact with the Versatex.

So there, I'm done with this testing! I will be adding Versatex to all of my paints and will probably do a heat setting oven treatment. I think this approach will give me the best permanence to the paint and eliminate hours of ironing.

I hope this information helps you but before you rely on it, please test it for yourself. 

Does paint count in stash stats?

For my tracking all of my purchases count. I have one category in Quicken for my hobby purchases and it's that category that I'm trying to get under control. There was NO control on these purchases! In my defense I basically used up all of the starter packs and sample sets of both Jacquard and Stewart Gill paints. From Dharma (right) I re-stocked dye powders and bought new Jacquard paint colors. From Artist Cellar I stocked up on lots of new colors and even added some Galactica and TrueColours to the stock. Don't choke. I spent about $300.

The sad thing is that I am still below my average monthly expenditure rate and I'm still on the positive side of the ledger.

On the stash use side I used fabric this week! Woohoo! The ugly quilt that I finished yesterday has about 6 yards of fabric in the backing and binding! It was a wide back and there was one long piece left over. I cut that into fat quarters for dyeing. I'm preparing my Great-Grandmother's quilt tops for quilting and the backing and binding are all coming from the stash. I won't count those until they are actually done.

I used some of my dyes yesterday. I took a side trip off of my list and dyed these fabrics. Each is 2 yards. I was going to show you how I made them because I had great plans. After I got everything in the dye vats for curing I suddenly realized that I had mixed my dyes all wrong and used 50% more than I needed. But there's no such thing as ugly fabric - these were all dyed for painting so you'll see them again soon!

Fabric Dyeing - I learned new things

I had one more dyeing test that I wanted to do this weekend and that was to see if curing time makes a difference. I decided to test two colors to see if the dye color makes a difference. As you can see on the left, the fabric is as dyed as it's getting after 1 hour. I added the gray image on the right so you can see it the best. So given my water, dyes and temperature I know that I can remove my fabrics from the dye after 1 hour of dye time.

I also learned a few more things!

1. I am not mixing my dye powders correctly. I was following some directions from a book and mixing all of my dye powders at the same ratio. After talking to the nice folks at Dharma Trading I learned that those asterisks by the dye names actually mean something! Some of my dyes need to be mixed more concentrated than I have done.
2. I've finally worked out the best way to rinse the fabrics. I used to rinse the fabric under constant running water for a long time and then soak in several rinse baths for short periods. I've learned that the best and least water wasteful method is to soak the fabrics for an hour each in 3 hot water baths. It doesn't seem to matter that the water gets really dark, as long as the fabric is in the water it will continue to leach out the excess dye. It seems that no matter how much dye I used that 3 soaking sessions in very hot water is enough to get out all of the dye.

So, I think I am done with my dyeing tests for a while. I'm sure I'll do some color mixing experiments but I'm over the method experiments for now. I did take some time and dye to have some fun. I did two parfait sets (at left). I don't know why, but I love dyeing black and gray colors so I'm happy with the top row and I think they will look great with metallic paints on them!

  The fabrics on the right were dyed as singles but I used two colors on each. I put one color in the bottom of the container and either folded or waded the fabric and placed it in the container. Then I poured the second color on top. I like them all but my favorite of all of the pieces I did yesterday is the one in the lower left corner.

What fun!

More Metallic Fabrics

I had more fun with the metallic paints yesterday and painted these fabrics.

The green one in the middle (third from the right) is  painted with Jacquard paints and all of the others are painted with Stewart Gill. The point of these samples was to see if I could get enough paint coverage to cover the print of the commercial fabric underneath - as a good way to utilize ugly fabric! If you click on the picture you will see that it doesn't totally cover the print but it would have worked just great if I had used the back of the fabric instead of the front.

They really don't photograph very well. There's a lot of depth to the color and they really sparkle! My favorite is the third from the left, the black/gray one. It is base painted with Stewart Gill Black Pearlize. What an awesome paint!  The fabric on the far right was made at the end of the day and just has every paint roller run over it to get some of the excess paint out of the rollers before cleaning.

The other paints I used are Colourize, Alchemy, Metamica and Byzantia. Once the fabrics are dry and heat set the hand of the ones painted with the Stewart Gill paints are the closest to the original hand of the fabric. The fabrics painted with Jacquard are much stiffer. They are both soft after washing but I don't think fabrics painted with these paints will often be washed.

I don't want to totally knock Jacquard paints because they are still very good paints and they are less expensive than the Stewart Gill. But I love the Stewart Gill paints and Jacquard doesn't make anything similar to Alchemy or Byzantia. Alchemy is an interference paint and is great as the final layer. If you want to try Stewart Gill paints I recommend trying one (or all) of the 4 white Alchemy paints and a couple of the Byzantia colors. I particularly like color 03 Illuminata. My sewing expense control efforts were totally shot last night when I ordered a huge supply of the Stewart Gill paints!

The final thing that I wanted to test was colorfastness of the paints. I heat set them with the iron on high and keeping the iron in place for 5 seconds as I moved it over the fabric. I made sure to overlap each stop and I ironed front and back. On one fabric I barely ironed at all. I washed the fabrics in my regular laundry wash load on warm.

From left to right:

Jacquard painted, unwashed and washed

Stewart Gill painted, unwashed and washed

Stewart Gill painted, minimally heat set, unwashed and washed

The heat set fabrics all performed about the same. There was some fading of the color on both samples. The one that was minimally heat set lost lots of color. So, heat setting is important but the heat setting I did was not enough. Next I will put the fabrics in the dryer for 30 minutes or more and see if that makes a difference. I'll also do a test with cold water washing instead of warm.

More on this next weekend!

Fabric Dyeing Gradient Test - Follow Up

Remember my frustration with my fabric dyeing last weekend? I had dyed a gradient of green and even with full strength dye concentrate I did not get good color saturation. Thanks to some great blog readers I received some good guidance so was ready to try it again today. The primary recommendation was to control the temperature of the dyeing area better. I dye in the basement and it can be pretty cool there in the winter. I cranked up the space heater this morning and kept it running the entire time that the fabrics were dyeing. Every other variable was the same: fabric (size and type), dye, soda ash mix and dye ratios.

As a reminder, I am using fat 1/8th pieces of fabric and 6 teaspoons (1 ounce) of dye. The lightest shade is 1/8th teaspoon of dye with water to make 1 ounce. The darkest shade is 100% dye concentrate. I left the fabrics to cure for 5 hours. I was even still listening to the same audio book!

What a difference the heat made:

The fabrics in the top row are from last weekend, the bottom row are todays efforts. The color saturation is much better. Here is the photo in black and white so you can see just the value differences.

Another recommendation was that I might need to make this dye concentrate stronger since green is a mixed dye. I decided to compare the results of the green (mixed dye) with red (a primary).

Here it is in black and white so you can see the value comparison better.

The green fabrics are actually a tiny bit darker. My opinion is that I am happy with the results. I'm still not thrilled with the actual hue of the green. It has more blue in it than I wanted, but it's dyeing much better with the heat added and I think the concentrate ratio of dye powder is OK as is.

I also received some other suggestions about the dyeing method so I decided to test them as well. I use the Ann Johnston method of immersion dyeing. Joanna suggested soaking the fabric in the soda ash water first, wring out the excess moisture, immerse the fabric in the dye and then lay it flat to cure. Wil suggested that I apply the soda ash first, wring out the excess moisture and then immersion dye the fabric. I tried both of these methods with the 3 teaspoon concentration of dye (50% dye concentrate, 50% water).

The piece on the left was cured flat in the open air. The piece in the middle is from the set above (immersion dyed with soda ash water applied after the dye). The piece on the right uses soda ash soaked fabric, the fabric was folded to fit in a zip-lock bag and the dye poured in. I sealed the bag and squished the dye around and then let it cure with all of the other samples. The fold lines do not shows in the final fabric.

It's easy to see that all three methods worked very well and all are acceptable. The sample on the right has the most even color (dyed in the zip-lock bag) and the one on the left (cured flat) is a close second. The middle piece is the most mottled. I'm glad I did this particular experiment because it will help me when I am trying for specific textures. It also seems to me that there's less water waste with the methods that require the fabric to be soaked in the soda ash solution.

All very interesting......in a geeky obsessed sort of way. I'm making great progress on the weekend list. The Saturday chores are done and I also painted 6 more metallic fabrics. I can't wait to show them to you tomorrow after they have dried and been ironed to set the paint.

Metallic fabrics

Here is the second set of fabrics after metallic painting. These didn't turn out as good as the first set but they are still much better than the fabric that I started with. There's more metallic painting in my near future!

Dyeing and Painting - Frustration and Fun

I had planned on several chores today but reconsidered over breakfast and decided to do some fabric dyeing and painting. The dyeing results are a little frustrating but the painting was a success.

I have been frustrated with my dye results lately because I am not getting the deep colors that I want. Today I decided to do some testing of dye strengths to give me a basic guide for mixing my dyes. I cut exact fat eights and measured my liquids by weight so that I could control the variables. I made 8 different strengths from 1/8 tsp dye in 1 ounce of water (far left) to full strength 1 ounce of dye concentrate only (far right). I did get a gradation, as expected but I am disappointed with the lack of deep color in the full strength samples. I have gotten much better results than this when Anne and I have dyed fabric at the river. I have some fabrics from a few years ago that are very vibrant. I think there are 2 variables that I need to test. First is the temperature. I do use a space heater in the basement when dyeing and I use warm water to wet the fabric and mix the dye concentrate but the ambient temperature during the day is about 72. Maybe the basement is too cool.

The second possible variable is the brand of dye. Anne and I use Pro Chemical dyes at the river and I have been using Dharma at home. Does anyone have any insight to offer on this one?  I think I will order some dye powders from Pro Chemical and do some comparisons. I am also not at all happy with this green dye. In the lighter shades it's blue. This is supposed to be a real Kelly green. It's not even close.

All is not lost - it was a good exercise. I finished up the dye session by painting some more metallic fabrics. The ones that I painted last week were done over some hand dyed fabrics. I painted these over some ugly commercial print fabrics from the stash. I think I've found a great way to rid myself of some ugly fabrics! I'm experimenting with a couple of different techniques and two brands of paints. (I did not make a resolution to be "free and easy". I will continue to obsess!)

I also made a couple of batches of lotion. It is the season of "heavy use"!

Tomorrow my serger and my Pfaff 7550 go into the shop for a litle R&R.

Fun With Fabric Paints

I had to take a break from boxes (sort of, I did make one box you'll see later) and got the urge to do some fabric painting. Plus I was feeling really guilt for not getting my blog drawing fabrics in the mail yet. You may remember that I did the fabric dyeing in November and I still do not have everything in the mail.  I gave Mary her backing fabric when we met earlier this month but the other 4 are still here. That's because I was not happy with some of them.

I am please with both of these sets and decided to leave them alone. The top set is a gradient of yellow to red and the bottom set is a pastel color wheel. The gradient is the first one that I have done that I felt turned out "right" and I really love the soft colors of the pastel set and I dyed these after I purchased purple and green dyes from Dharma. Before I had been mixing dyes for my purple and green but my color mixing testing convinced me that pure purple and green dyes and paints are worth having.

 

   

 

 

The third set of fabrics for the blog drawing were dyed using Ann Johnston's color parfait technique. I decided to tart two of them up with some painting. I used primarily Stewart Gill paints on these using Metallica, Pearlize, Alchemy and Colourize in various blends. On the one on the left I used a combination of stencils and stamps. The stencil worked great but the stamp did not. I actually had to go back and paint in all of those squares! I will not do that again. You can't see it in this picture but there is a smaller square stamp and some brush strokes over the entire piece. The one on the right has a base of brush strokes in a darker metallic with splatters of silver Metallica.

Next up are these fabrics that I dyed trying to get "sky" images. the only one that turned out good and I left alone is the one on the right. The blue on the left came out darker than I wanted so I lightened it up with some sponging over the dark areas using either Alchemy or Pearlize or both - I can't remember. The one in the middle was dyed using a recipe in Ann Johnston's book called "sunrise". It came out pink and gray. When I saw the sunrise photos on Randi's blog I had my inspiration. I painted over the pink and gray with DyeNaFlow paints and improved that fabric greatly!

Next on the agenda was another box - see, I told you there were more boxes! This is a tissue box for my tiny powder room that I keep decorating. I bought this fabric in Houston from Jeanette's Fabric to Dye For. She has the most beautifully saturated hand-dyed colors I've ever seen and she had a table full of these awesome metallic fat quarters. I bought two of them. This one was purchased specifically for a bathroom tissue box! I figure that I spend a lot of time in there and want to have some pretty things to look at.

The metallic fat quarters are $8 each - quite pricey for something that I might want a lot of! So my next painting assignment was to try to mimic the look. I didn't quite get the look that Jeanette has for her fabrics and her fabric is much stiffer but I sure do like what I did get. I started with these:

I did not use the dark blue/green one that is third from the left. After a big mess and lots of fun I ended up with this!

Aren't they cool! I laid them out backwards in this photo to the fabric on the far left in the top picture is the same as the fabric on the far right in the bottom picture. I used a combination of Jacquard and Stewart Gill paints. I thought I might use up the Jacquard paints but, fortunately, I have a lot of paint left to do lots more of these. Can't you see this as a good way to rehabilitate bad dyed fabrics?

What's this?

It's the fabric dyeing for my blog drawing winners! Even the big gray tub - that's a backing for Mary. I spent all morning doing fabric dyeing. What fun!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Mom, brother and my Aunt and I just had the yummy lefovers for lunch. Tomorrow I am teaching at the LQS so I need to get my materials and notes together. Then I can wash all of these out and see what I got! I was hoping to finish quilting Anne's quilt today but I don't think that will happen. Maybe tomorrow after class.

A color matching tip

Mom reminded me to post about a tip that we picked up in the Jean Wells Keenan class at Houston. One of our classmates brought this one to us. It's a tip to help isolate and match colors in small quantities in photos or fabric (or whatever). All it takes is an index card with a 1" (more or less) square cut into the card along with a very small hole at least an inch and a half away. In this example I have placed the hole in the card over a small patch of an orange daylily. With that color isolated I can then place fabric or color chips under the larger opening until I find the matching color. I thought this was just brilliant!

Tie Dye 101

This really isn't a lesson but I am very excited to share the results of our first tie dye experiment this weekend. In fact, I didn't get anything else on my weekend list done except for fabric dyeing. Chris and Mom have worked very hard landscaping and have a few more things to do tomorrow before I can share photos of that. The rest of my weekend was spent cooking - not a normal task for me - but I do like making things like spaghetti sauce and chili to freeze. If I'm going to cook I need to get multiple meals from the effort. All in all it was very busy and very productive! So, on to the tie dye party.....

The weekend wrap up with some fabric dyeing

It's been a beautiful weekend here in Virginia and it's been a productive weekend as well. I have a few dye samples to show at the end of the post but here's a recap of my weekend list.

Bind the red/white/blue QOV - Done and posted in the last post! Yeah!!

Test the new Churn Dash fat quarter pattern (this will be the pattern for the pink and brown quilt that will now be called "Kim's Pink and Brown Quilt". Boy did this turn into a complex project! Not for any reason that I became inept at math in the middle of the project! My goal in designing these projects is to work out a block that optimizes the use of the fat quarter. I thought I had it last night and proceeded to cut out the parts and didn't realize that I was missing 2 pieces until I had cut it out and tried to lay out the block! Suddenly I had new pieces for my strip and scrap bins! LOL! Good thing those were "test" fat quarters (old or ugly). Today I finally got it. The finished block (with a sashing) will be 13 inches finished. I didn't get another trial version cut out but will do that next weekend.

Organize the mess I made for the new Chinese Coins quilt in blues and browns - No photo as proof but I got this done too. Had to, the mess was spread all over the cutting table and I had to get it cleaned up to trim the QOV. I even made 3 blocks!

Dye backing for Anne's black/white/red quilt and the Chinese Coins fish QOV - Well, this has been an interesting exercise that has taken longer than expected but only because of that math disorder mentioned earlier. I started yesterday with some sample dyeing using fat 8th fabrics. I did the 3 black gradients on the left and decided that I wanted the lighter one. The next three (orange, yellow, blue) were trials for the Chinese Coins quilt. I liked the blue best but wanted to refine the color (the last 2). Here's that I ended up with:

Black - 1 tsp black dye concentrate to 1 cup of water (7 cups total). I love this black dye - Jet Black 250 from Dharma Trading.

Blue - 1 tsp blue, 1/4 tsp yellow, 1/8 tsp black to 1 cup of water (7 cups total).

The humorous part was that on my first run through on the black backing was that instead of multiplying the 1/8th ratio for the test piece by 8 for 1 cup and then by 7 for 7 cups, I just multiplied by 7 - AND I DIDN'T NOTICE THE DYE WAS LIGHTER!!!! That piece is in a second dye bath now and it's time to go rinse it out.

I am going to Scottsdale tomorrow for a work conference but I have another post on Color Theory ready that I will work on and post while I am gone. The conference is one of those "it's really about golf" conference which means 3 half-days of meetings. Since I can't golf, I will get to meet up with a longarm buddy! I met Sue at MQX this year and I'm looking forward to seeing her again.

Craft Week - Dyeing and Painting

We started doing these Craft Week vacations a few years ago but they actually started as dye week.  Anne took some dyeing classes at Houston one year and wanted to start doing some dyeing here. I was not the least bit interested. Obviously I was wrong again since I have my own dye area in my basement now. This week I didn't want to dye all week but I did want to do two things - experiment with making gradients and some sun printing.

Progress on the weekend....

Friday night and Saturday were incredibly productive. The best part was Mom and my Aunt visiting to pick up the quilt. We went to my favorite LQS and I only bought the one piece of fabric that I went there for! I was tempted but maintained control. Here's how I'm doing on my list...

Fabric Dyeing Success

All in all it was a great weekend! I got to visit with my Goddaughter as she used our house as a hotel while she attended a wedding nearby. I haven't seen her in a year so it was wonderful to see her again. On the sewing/fiber front I got LOTS done! I made good progress on the center section of Mom's quilt and made good progress on the Art Nouveau self portrait postcards. Of course the best part of the weekend was diving into the fabric dyes.

Jumping into fabric dyeing

I got all of the dye supplies I ordered so I jumped right in last night. I did do some fun pieces which I will show in a post later. But you know I can't do anythng with a carefree approach - I have to turn it into a study! Fabric dyeing will be no different. One of the things I wanted to figure out is what fabric is best for dyeing - and I mean the best fabric for me. Dharma Trading has fabric sample packs so I ordered 3 of the cotton set to see the difference between the types of fabrics. I wanted three because I wanted to dye with each primary to see if fabrics took any of the colors differently. I actually used both the pigment and the process primaries. The "red" is half pigment red and half process red - same for the other colors.

I used a strong dye and dyed about 23 different fabrics from sheer Harem Cloth to heavy Cotton Duck. I also included a sample from an inexpensive ($2.99) cotton that I bought at my local Hancock's Fabrics. I bought a lot of this fabric recently to use for my initial practice - fortunately it performed very well in the dye test! Kona costs about $6 a yard at my LQS. I wanted to see if it was $3 better than the less expensive stuff. It will be nice to have these samples for reference in the future.

In the next photo I have placed the samples of the fabrics that I consider acceptable for quilting on my design wall. I left the image very large so that you can see the detail - if you are interested. I also left the color correction card in the photo so you can do any adjustments on your screen.