Ye Of Little Faith...

Now I'm scrambling to devise more horizontal space so I can do this again.

And again (click photo for a better view). Holy cow. Aside from having this thing taking up so much room in the studio, the flour paste resist I started last week turned out to be a lot of fun and incredibly easy. A little stinky, though... my flour might be out of date, I used an old bag that had been in the pantry for a while.

So, as I mentioned last week- I started with a large but boring piece of hand-dyed fabric. I pinned it to my work surface, which I'd covered with a flannel sheet. Then I whisked together 4 cups of water and 2 cups of plain white flour, adding the flour to the water slowly.

I poured the flour paste onto the fabric and, wearing rubber gloves, moved the paste around gently with my hands until it had covered the fabric. I took a wooden skewer and drew into it. Only a small amount of that seemed to show in the final piece but it's worth exploring further.

Then I set it aside to dry.

It took about 4 days for it to fully dry. Crackling the dried paste was easy... I just unpinned the fabric and gently scrunched it in my hands, a small amount at a time, until the whole thing seemed cracked. I was worried the paste would start flaking off, but it never really did until I wanted it to.

I painted it with Golden fluid acrylic paint in Dioxazine Purple and left it to dry and cure for another four days. I couldn't help but take a peek as that paint was setting, so I popped some of the dried paste off.

Even that little peek made me realize just how well it was going to work. 

Guh. 

My final worry was that the flour paste would never come out. Once again, however, I've been reminded to trust the process. I soaked the fabric this morning in a bucket of cool (tap) water and after about 20 minutes of soaking, I manipulated the fabric gently in my hands. **The paste melted right off.  I spent about 15 minutes making sure it was all removed, then washed the fabric on a soak cycle in my washing machine with a little Synthrapol and ironed it dry. 

I LOVE this technique. I don't know how yet, but I want to find a way to stack large pieces like this to dry so I can do more than one at a time. I'm thinking large masonite planks separated by bricks, or somesuch. Such a stacking system would also help me a ton when I do other large, wet media techniques on paper and fabric. Hmmm... modifications to the wet studio may be necessary.

Happy creating!

** Something worth noting: when I dumped the dirty water out of the bucket during my clean-up, there were a huge amount of undissolved clumps of flour paste in the bottom of the bucket. If I had just upended the bucket into my sink, all that garbage would have wound up in my drain! Please try to remember this when you pour out the water and leave the debris in the bucket. Scoop it out with paper toweling and discard.

By Your Bootstraps- Part 2

On Tuesday, once the pieces I'd jar-dyed and blogged about yesterday had batched and were fully washed, dried and ironed, my next task was more difficult- creating interesting surface design on these already complex fabrics without destroying or obliterating what's intrinsically beautiful about them. 

For the rest of this week, I've been using the smaller of these pieces to try and develop a theme that I can carry forward and use on the three largest pieces. If any of those pieces are successful, I'd like to enter them into this contest: Fabric 2010: Handmade Designs In Fabric For Quiltmaking. The rules of the contest are simple: the hand must remain appropriate to the fabric, the pigments must be colorfast, and the fabric washable and sellable. 

I started with the least interesting fabrics and broke out all of my stamps, screens and stencils, as well as every textile paint and dye I could lay hands on. 

 

This piece got some stamping with textile inks, metallic fabric paint and matte fabric paint. 

 

Not bad, but a little too matchy-matchy and pastel for my taste. Plus, once I'd finished stamping, the fabric color became uninteresting to me. To spice it up, I painted it with a couple of different colors of diluted dye-na-flow, scrunched it vertically and left it to dry on a flat, non-porous surface. 

Now we're talking. The pigment, as expected, rose into the peaks and folds of the material to create a bold striped pattern, but it also deepened the overall value of the fabric as well. I heat set the pigments with a dry, hot iron, washed it once more on the soak cycle and ironed it again. I'm happy to report that the hand is still soft and supple and the color is well set. This is a good start towards my goal.

One of the fun things about hand-dyed fabrics is that they don't have a right or wrong side... both sides look equally beautiful. Here's the back side of the piece above.

Next I tried a darker fabric. My first thought was to break out the metallic oil sticks, but I decided that might almost be too obvious. Instead, I reached for the discharge paste and one of my old carved foam printing plates. I stamped the paste on in a few spots, waited for it to dry and then began ironing (which is how the discharge process is activated).**

Almost as soon as I began ironing I removed much more color from one area than I liked. That mistake frustrated me, but then I realized that I was in control of exactly how much dye I allowed the discharge paste to remove. I know that seems like such a no-brainer now, but it had never occurred to me before that I didn't have to just keep ironing until the process stopped. I could iron until I achieved the effect I wanted and then stop and launder the rest of the paste out of the fabric. 

I tried that with this piece, making sure I ran it through the machine twice on the soak cycle, and then to be sure I'd removed all of the excess paste, I ironed the piece once more. Just as I had hoped, no more color was removed. Now I had a subtle effect, but one glaring white-ish spot in the middle of the fabric. 

Out came the dye-na-flow once again, in violet. I wet the white spot, heavily watered down the paint on my brush, and lightly brushed the surface of the fabric, feathering the color outwards. After the fabric had dried again and was ironed for heat-setting, I could no longer even tell where I'd made the discharge mistake.


Next it got a little silk screen treatment with textile inks and it was finished... for now. I think.

26" x 39"

One more of the deeper violet/purple fabrics got the dye-na-flow treatment, but this time before any other media besides the dye had touched it. 

 

And once that was dried, ironed for color setting and run through the machine a couple of times with Synthrapol, it also was screen printed, only this time instead of straight fabric paints, I mixed the paints with discharge paste.  I knew the paste would remove the dyes but leave the dye-na-flow alone. Further, it would leave behind the fabric paints it was mixed with and give them a bright white background to really help them pop off the background color.

26" x 39"

This is by far my favorite piece and quite possibly the direction I will take the three large pieces that are waiting in the wings.

Next week, I'll use a flour paste resist to add a crackle finish to the boring green fabrics that came out of the top of the dye jar. I'll let you know how it goes.

Towards the end of the weekend or the beginning of next week, I'll be posting a step-by-step explanation of how I do jar dyeing.

In the meantime... oh you know, just be happy!

**(PLEASE NOTE: This is a toxic process... please use a respirator, saftey gloves and glasses and use only in a well-ventilated area. I'm not kidding about this.)

By Your Bootstraps- Part 1

Yep, I had a few bad weeks and then my computer went wonky for a while, but I'm back online (thanks, honey!) and I've been busy and want to tell you all about it, but it will take a couple of posts.

I was wandering through Target last week when I saw this beauty:

Two and a half gallon capacity, made of heavy glass with a mouth wide enough for me to put both my hands in at once (though why would I want to?), and topped with an airtight lid. Swoon. I admit that I snatched it greedily off the shelf as soon as I laid eyes on it. Best 20.00 I've spent all month!

So this week, naturally, I had to test it out with a new batch of parfait dyeing- nine pieces of cotton muslin. Six of the pieces are 26" x 39" and three of them are 42 & 1/2" x 55". I keep hearing the drum beat that extolls us to, "work larger, work larger..." and I am in agreement- to stretch myself, I must work larger and with a new wet studio, I don't have any more excuses not to.

But there's another reason for returning to what's become, for me, a fairly tried and true technique: there's a juried competition for fabric surface design on the Quilt Surface Design Symposium site that I very much want to enter.

So, you know the routine with parfait dyeing: layer dyes and fabrics in a jar; resist the powerful urge to yank the fabrics out when the liquid in the jar turns black (and it will, trust me); batch over night; wash out and ogle shamelessly at the beauty you made. 

(Of course, there's actually a lot more to it than that and because I always get a lot of questions about this technique when I mention it here, one of my next posts will be how I do jar dyeing, step-by-step. Please forgive me for not posting it here today but it isn't even nine o'clock and my head is drooping towards my chest already.)

The top two fabrics in the jar are often boring- they are only in contact with one or two dye colors and they generally aren't submerged in the dye bath, the way the bottom, and usually more interesting fabrics are. I haven't photographed those. I'm working on ways to repair that little foible, though, so please wish me luck. The rest of the pieces in the jar were more impressive.

 

26" x 39"

 

(detail)

  

42 & 1/2" x 55" (blurry, sorry about that)

 (detail)

  

26" x 39"

  

26" x 39"

 

  

42 & 1/2" x 55" 

  

42 & 1/2" x 55" 

 

(detail)

I found it a little spooky, but also kind of reassuring, that I almost perfectly matched the color combinations I'd achieved on my very first jar dyeing attempt. However, we all have our prefered color palette, I suppose, and this is mine- is it any real surprise that I keep reaching for the same dye colors?

Tomorrow I will finish this post and talk about what I spent the rest of the week doing with these fabrics and then perhaps over the weekend, I'll go into detail about parfait dyeing. In the meantime, happy creating!

Rescuing Ugly Fabric

(I'm so sorry this tutorial was so slow in arriving, life jumped up and got in the way of its completion!)

We all have them, even if we don't admit it: fabric scraps we bought on the sale table at the craft store ten years ago, stuff that was included in kits we never completed, and even more that we don't recognize but that wound up in our stash, nonetheless. We know we won't use these neglected fabrics. Not in their current state, anyway.

But there is hope for such castoffs, using inexpensive supplies from your local hardware or craft store and a little imagination.

I took this fabric:

... and turned it into this:

I also took this, a really horrible fabric that I would never use:

And turned it into this, a fabric I probably will use in the future:

 

Fair warning before you begin: this WILL change the "hand" of the fabric. The fabric will become anywhere from slightly to moderately stiff by the end of this process. However, it still stitches beautifully and as long as you're mindful of the limitations of your sewing machine needle- or your hand needles- to go through tough fabrics, you can add virtually endless, thin layers of stamping and paint.

Here's what you'll need:

~ Any fabric you know you will never use in its current state. The uglier, the better. Smooth fabric can yield good, crisp (stamped) images and more heavily textured fabric will yield a more distressed image, so choose according to your needs. I use cottons almost exclusively, so I offer no guarantees for how this will work on man-made fabrics!

~ Padded surface for printing. An old towel folded up will do perfectly, and it has the added benefit of being able to pin your fabric to it to keep it from shifting.

~Safety or straight pins. Inexpensive pins are fine for this job- they're going to get covered in paint anyway, so you won't be using these on fine textiles.

~ Acrylic paints in several coordinating colors. Craft paints work as well as artist quality paints for this technique. There are also several brands of excellent textile paints on the market, as well. Spend as little or as much as you like.

~ Fabric or textile medium. I use Delta Cermacoat or Liquitex Fabric Medium because it's what I have in the studio, but most acrylic paint companies make their own version that should work just as well. PLEASE NOTE: for this technique, If you are using paints specially formulated for textiles you will NOT need an additional fabric medium!

~ Stamps. This is the time to pull out and strut those hand-made stamps. Making your own stamps is incredibly simple and there are an almost endless variety of materials you can use, many of which will yield stamps that you can use for years. (I'll be working on a tutorial in the near future for making your own stamps and printing plates.) If you're using stamps that you haven't created yourself from original images, please be respectful of international copyright laws!

~ Paint palette or palette paper.

~ Cosmetic sponges or sponge brushes, and sponges that don't get stiff when dry. I find these sponges- great big yellow ones- in the hardware store in the cleaning supplies aisle. When I get them home, I cut them into smaller pieces. It's important to use these sponges for this technique because you want them pliable when dry.

~ Mister filled with water.

What you'll do:

~Using safety or straight pins, pin your fabric to your padded surface, making sure to pull the fabric taut without stretching it. This step is helpful but not critical with small pieces of fabric, but if you have a large piece of fabric you want to paint, it's going to want to shift and move a lot, even if it is pinned. If it isn't pinned, it could quickly become frustrating. Don't bother ironing out the wrinkles, they'll fall out by the time you're finished. You can use the fabric with its right side up or down, it doesn't really matter- you'll see little to none of the original print in the final product.

~ Spritz fabric lightly with water. You're not aiming to soak it, just to dampen it.

~ Set up your paint palette. Place a large dollop of each of two or three coordinating paint colors (in my case I used golden yellow, orange-red and red ) side by side. Then below them, squeeze out a large dollop of textile medium. I try to use a ratio of about 50:50 but you should read the directions on your textile medium because it may be different. Finally, off to the side of the palette, I often squeeze a smaller dollop of titanium white.

 

~ With a foam brush or sponge, swipe through one or two of the paint colors and the medium, picking up all three on the brush at the same time.

~ Brush paints and medium onto the dampened fabric, covering the original print as much or as little as you please. This is where the thicker paints will come in handy- they will provide more opaque coverage than thinner or liquid acrylics will. Allow the colors to blend on the fabric as you work, or if you prefer more defined blocks of color, you can do that, too!

 

 

~ Cover your fabric with paint, picking up occasional bits of titanium white to add variety and value changes.

 

~ Before the fabric dries, use the paint still in your sponge brush to add texture. "Slap" the fabric lightly with the flat edge of the brush in a pouncing movement. This will distribute unexpected splatters of paint across the entire surface.

~ The next step- stamping- can be done while the paint is still wet, or it can be done once the paint dries. For the sake of time and because I already have my paints and tools out and set up, I usually just work wet-into-wet.  Load a dry, pliable sponge with no more than two colors of paint (more and you risk muddying the colors) and a dab of the textile medium. I usually do this by mashing the surface of the loaded sponge gently with a craft stick to distribute the paint throughout the sponge. Dab the paint onto your stamp, covering the surface with a light coating of paint. Don't overload the stamp with paint or it will give you a smeared, blurry image.

~ Pick a spot on your fabric and stamp. More gentle pressure will yield a lighter image with a more distressed look. Firm pressure will yield a clearer impression. Continue stamping, changing paint colors (use clean sponges if necessary, to avoid muddying the colors), until you're happy with the design.

 

 

~ Allow fabric to fully dry. If your paints or textile mediums need to be set for color fast permanence, be sure to closely follow the instructions on your textile medium or fabric paints.