Week 2.5

Already, I am posting a bit late. Sorry, family issues needed attention. All is better now. Back to the dyeing adventures.

A few years ago, while in Oregon, I bought some potato dextrin to use as a resist. Finally, I dug it out and tried on two pieces. They are okay first tries with this resist. 

The first piece was from Week One using thin yellow and blue dyes on wet soda ash fabric - not exciting. I mixed the potato dextrin using a recipe and spread it on the fabric to dry overnight. Didn't quite work. A thicker batch of resist would have cracked as it dried. I had to twist and crumble this piece to get breaks in the resist. I brushed on a medium print paste with indigo dye and let it dry overnight. I got some texture!

The second piece was white fabric previously soaked in soda ash and dried. I used an edged tool to scrape lines in the wet resist. After drying overnight, I brushed on medium thick indigo mixture and let it dry. Next day, I soaked the fabrics to remove the resist - that was the easiest step. I will repeat this technique with a thicker mixture of resist and one day try a flour resist.

Here I mixed a "thin" mixture (dye concentrate and urea water) and applied it, leaving white areas, with sponge brushes on damp soda ash soaked fabric. The dye mixture spread and created nice shapes and textures.

I used thin dye mixture here, but on dry soda ash soaked fabric. Okay, but not quite what I hoped it would be. I can always print on top of this. Hmmm.

All of these examples were created using exercises in Ann Johnston's book, Color by Design. This is why we practice again and again, often by mistakes. I just love messing about with fabrics and dyes.

More to come.

Thanks for visiting. Karen