Dyed Batting Art Quilt

If you've been reading my blog, you've seen the results of my dyed cotton batting experiments. Almost immediately after drying and ironing these little beauties, my mind started working on how they could be used.

I played with them a bit and then started cutting and spray basting them together and today, I finished stitching the piece I created.


The process was fairly straightforward. To strengthen the quilt, I layered two coordinating batting pieces together with spray baste. I intentionally played on their uneven, wavy edges by tugging them gently to help flute them and by layering them in such a way that the edges were shown off to their best advantage.

On top of this sandwich, I layered another strip of wine-colored dyed batting and a piece of painted watercolor paper that had been heavily wrinkled.

Also on this piece is a dryer sheet that's been pressed flat. I used a white oil stick and a hot glue rubbing plate I'd made years ago to create a white-on-white effect. I allowed the dryer sheet for cure for a few days and then ironed it between two pieces of parchment paper to set the paint.

Finally, I added a strip of left over, dyed paper toweling- seen in the detail photo, below- which I stiffened by brushing with Paverpol and allowing to dry fully.



The piece was free-motion stitched with a deliberate attempt to reinforce a straight-lined theme and then a machine-wrapped cord I made of eyelash yarn was machine couched in a spiral pattern to break the tension and off-set the linear free-motion quilting.

The edges will be left raw and uneven, as was the original intent. The completed piece measures approximately 18" x 24". (And yes, it's available for purchase! :D)

I believe I will try mounting it on a painted stretched canvas.

Coming up this week, I will post an article I'm writing about revitalizing your creative muse, and - drum roll, please- post a free giveaway to celebrate the grand opening of my new blog.

Happy creating!

Dying to Dye!

Tell me, is there anything more satisfying and soothing to the soul than watching freshly hand-dyed fabrics flapping in the breeze on a hot, sunny Fourth of July? If so, I don't know what it is. Seeing laundry on the line always takes me back to my childhood when my mother would dry all of our clothes on many long clotheslines strung across the yard, and now as an adult a small zing of excitement goes through me when I see my own handiwork up there on my modest little clothesline.


The fabric above is a 2 yard, off the bolt, high thread count cotton that I compression dyed a couple of days ago. It started out simply enough... an accordion pleat fold and some fabric scraps to tie it all off (the fabric laying underneath is a cotton scrap that I figured would be useful for soaking up any excess dye)...


The intention right from the start was to overdye it with turquoise to bring it up to an electric green.

It sort of worked:


I'm not totally thrilled with the result, but I know I have to be patient with myself: it didn't take me just a couple of months to learn how to paint or to blend paints, it took years, and it won't take me just a few months to master fabric dyeing techniques, either.

However, it never hurts to balance out a semi-success with a total success:


This piece started as 2 yards of unbleached muslin, which I pleated and tied in the same manner as the one above, but this time, in an effort to make the "tie-dye" effect more prominent, I used rubber bands instead of cotton strips in the hope that the rubber would resist the dyes more. That didn't really happen, but the fault, dear Brutus, lies with us: my lousy hand strength just isn't powerful enough to get a good, tight compression. I'm thinking of investing in some narrow latex tubing, the kind you find in medical supply stores, in the hopes of being able to get a little more torque when pulling the knots tight. I'll post my results with that once I've tried it.

This piece was dyed with some lovely cotton and canvas scraps I had lying around and has also produced reams of wonderfully dyed plain white paper towels, which are still drying in the garage.


While it may seem extreme to blog about two little piece of fabric when there are amazing textile artists out there spending weeks out of every year dying pounds and pounds of fabric, I am a newcomer to fabric dyeing, and my hope is to help encourage other newcomers like myself to explore things outside their creative comfort zones, too. Plus, it'll be a hoot to look back on these journals in years to come and see how far I've progressed.

So that's been the last few days. The rest of the weekend will probably be textile-free; it is a national holiday, after all!

This morning, after tragically watching a neighbor's cat make off with one of my backyard baby doves in its mouth, I was able to pull myself together enough to snap these shots of a daddy woodpecker feeding two chicks who were staying safely up the tree until he'd come offering goodies (notice the cardinal looking on- those guys are real characters!).


(The soft focus comes from shooting through the window screen, but I kind of like the effect.)

Daddy was diplomatic in his feeding practices... despite one of the chicks aggressively chasing the other one away, Dad always managed to have a bite to feed to each hungry mouth.


And in the "holy cow!" category, this little squirrel sat poised for a VERY long time on an electrical cable that runs outside our fence.


And just to give a little perspective of exactly how far away from the ground he really was on his swaying perch...


The black arrow points to our tiny friend way off in the distance. And yes, I love the optic zoom on my camera!

So for tonight, it's boiled shrimp, which were swimming in the Gulf just this morning, and then we will watch our city's fireworks from the pool.

It's a charmed life.

Happy Fourth of July!

Dyeing Cotton Batting

Dyeing day! I cut a Twin-sized piece of bleached cotton batting into 8 large pieces, blanketed the entire kitchen in plastic wrap, and went at it like a little kid with a new set of finger paints!

I created a colorway in greens and yellows:


And another in oranges:



Today I used RIT dyes because I was hoping to decrease my workload a tad. And while I enjoyed it, this process was actually a lot of work for 8 pieces of batting... my hands ache and need a gallon of moisturizer, my back is stiff from leaning over the sink rinsing and rinsing and rinsing. Oh, and did I mention the rinsing?

I first soaked each piece of batting in hot water to open the fibers and after I mixed my colors, I dipped, dripped, poured and squeezed color though each one individually. For the first couple of pieces, I really did try to follow the directions I'd read on the RIT web site but it simply wasn't working for me so finally I just winged it and things picked up right away.

After sloshing the batting around in various colors for a while, I put each one in the microwave- separately- in a disposable plastic container, with its liquid included (do NOT wring fabric out and then nuke it, it could easily catch on fire!), covered it loosely and microwaved it for 1 minute.

When each piece came out of the microwave oven, I rinsed it- a lot! Did I mention that? - in warm water until the water ran clear, then dropped it into the washing machine for a brief run on a gentle cycle. I usually use Synthrapol to clean dyed fabric if I have to wash it (a step I like to avoid if at all possible) but this time I just used a little Tide in each load.

Then they all hung on the line outside for a few hours until the sky started rumbling with thunder.

I ironed them but this step was not really necessary. Also, it did flatten the beautiful nubbly texture of the batting, but I think if I need to get some of that back all I'll have to do is throw it back in the washing machine for a short spin.

The only bad note of the day was when I tried to mix one of my yellows with a navy blue that- as it turns out- had as much red in it as blue. Notice the horrible green mess at the bottom of the pile in the "green/yellow" photo? Yeah... imagine sickly army green with huge spots of blue dye so dark they read as black and you might come close to how ugly this piece of batting is. Really. I might even use it to clean the gutters next weekend- and I bet it improves the color. It's that bad.

But the other seven pieces seem to have come through with attractive, bright colors. The batting itself held up well, too, although some of the pieces that needed more rinsing than others are showing some thin spots. That's ok, this stuff won't be used for construction of a quilt- probably most of it will get cut up and sewn into little appliqués and whatnot.

And speaking of appliqué, yesterday I finally finished a quilt I had started a few months back as part of a class taught by Jane LaFazio, hosted by Joggles.com.

The class was called Art Quilt Explorations and one of the assignments was to create an appliqué animal quilt. Since hummers are some of my favorite creatures ever, it was a natural fit.

However, after I'd fused all the pieces of the bird and grass onto the quilt and started stitching, I realized my skill level with the sewing machine could easily fray the edges, so I stitched what I was comfortable with and then put it aside until the day I felt confident enough to finish it without ruining it.

That day was yesterday! And oh well- I did fray the edges, somewhat. More practice will be necessary there, I guess. But I also trimmed and bound the piece (I used machine-wrapped cording for that), and then fused fabric and a label to the back to cover my messy stitch work. The piece is finally complete and I'm thrilled! It measures a modest 14" x 19" but it's one of the most work-intensive quilts I've done so far (and I guess that's not saying a lot... I only have about 7-8 quilts under my belt, to date).

EDIT: I should have mentioned but failed to (and for that, I sincerely apologize to Dianne Giancola, the RIT dye rep who demo'd the technique!) that this is not a technique I developed myself. I first saw dyed cotton batting when our local PBS station recently aired episode 312-3 of Quilting Arts TV.

After Dyeing

Here's a photo of my first attempt to quilt first, dye later. It's also the result, as I indicated in my last post, of my first attempt to use Procion MX dyes in a grown-up and responsible way.

This is the completed quilt, with binding but before dyeing:


And this is after dyeing:


This little quilt has been a series of experiments for me in stitching, dyeing and alternate binding and while some of the results I got were excellent, others were not and will require more practice and study- labors of love, for me.

I used 4 dye colors: (MX 004) lemon yellow in the center, (035) hot pink extending out from that to create orange, (028) bright scarlet towards the outside edges blending with the hot pink, and finally (050) deep purple on the binding itself.

The colors are vibrant and distinct, but I'll admit I didn't expect to split the dyes quite so obviously. Coming from a painting background, blending color has always been SOP for me but as I'm learning, each dye color strikes the fabric very differently from the other colors and don't blend exactly as I expect them to. Live and learn. This is one area where I know I won't instantly achieve beautiful results- only practice and experience will win this race. I think it would be a good idea for me to look into a local, live fabric dyeing class, too.

The best part of this quilt is the binding, I think. I love the slightly grungy, frayed look it has, and most of the fabrics used to construct it show the purple dye nicely, despite it having mixed somewhat with the yellow dye in the low immersion process.

The cotton thread, as expected, absorbed the dyes nicely. The stitching would be a good opportunity to experiment with using some threads that cannot be dyed by Procion MX. I'll try that in a future piece.

I learned a LOT from the process and it was fun, which means I'll be more likely to keep working on it it until I've got the process learned.

This quilt may have no future... I could wind up using it as a background for more painting/stitching/beading, or I may just leave it as is, a kind of dyeing sampler that can help me correct mistakes in the future.

One fun bonus was the pile of colorful tissue I wound up with after mopping up the work area with plain white 2-ply paper towels.


These pretty little things may get fused to muslin for later stitching.

This week my goals are ambitious... I want to get away from the sewing machine for a little while and get back into the studio, so I plan to do some painting. I found two great children's books that I'd like to start altering, so that will take up a few joyful days of splashing paint and glue around and digging through my scraps of paper and fabrics for collage.

Later in the week, however, I'd like to revisit textiles again and RIT dye some cotton batting I bought last week for that purpose. I'm looking forward to taking over my kitchen for a couple of hours of color-mixing fun!

Two Art Quilts In Progress

In the last two weeks, I've made significant progress on two small art quilts I've been working on.

The first quilt is based on an excellent online, on-demand class by artist Terry Stegmiller. The class is called Creative Art Quilting Techniques: Fused & Painted Backgrounds and is very inspiring.

This photograph shows the finished background piece with it's binding.

Without going into explicit detail out of respect for Ms. Stegmiller's clever techniques (go buy the PDF, you won't be sorry), I can say that this piece contains multiple layers of various weights of cotton, nylon and chiffon fabrics in neutral tones, machine pieced with the edges left raw. I even stitched in a drier sheet- I love the sheer texture of the fibers.

The binding was done with a length of decorative elastic I stumbled across in a "grab bag" a few months ago. It was tricky to work with and didn't want to go on too straight, but I'm still happy with the result.

The foreground of this piece is likely to be a photo taken in my back yard of one of my many wild critter visitors, printed on a sheer piece of chiffon... that's what I envision, anyway; sometimes a piece will want to take me in another direction altogether, and I try to pay attention to those impulses.

The second piece I'm working on is inspired by the book, Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art: Colour, Texture and Distortion, by textile artist C. June Barnes.

This piece is machine pieced, something I only just (joyfully) learned to do. I used torn strips of various cotton fabrics in whites and beiges, including some soft felt from an old flannel sheet and some heavy painter's canvas, stitching each of them in turn with heavy white cotton thread to a quilt sandwich of batting and Timtex . The idea behind this quilt has always been that it would be low-immersion dyed in Procion MX fiber-reactive dyes, so everything visible on the quilt is dyeable.

Each strip of fabric contains some new (for me) free motion machine stitch patterns, some of which I like better than others. It's sort of a sampler of stitches I'm comfortable attempting right now. Should be fun to look back at this piece in ten or twenty years and see how far I've come.

The binding was a bit of an experiment. I used scraps of white and off-white fabrics and stitched them to the back of the quilt. Then I pulled them forward and stitched them to the front, leaving the edges of each scrap raw.

It makes for an interesting look, especially when the piece is laundered, which was the next thing I did to it, in preperation for dyeing it.

After gentle laundering, I soaked the quilt in soda ash and decided on the dye colors I wanted to use. The quilt soaked for about 30 minutes and then I ran it through a spin cycle in the washing machine and hung it to dry outside.

Impatient as always (and really hoping I don't pay too dearly for it), I took the piece off the line before it was totally dry and ironed some of the larger wrinkles out of it. Then I applied my dyes, although the fabric was still a little damp.

It's batching in the garage right now... can't wait to see what I wake up to in the morning! :D

I will post photos of each piece as it is completed. In the meantime, some photos for summer inspiration...