One Step Past Ann Johnston

Hi!  Judith here.  With my broken hand in February I wasn't able to post all the experiments that I did using Ann Johnston's techniques.  I am glad that I now have 3 days to show off some of the experiments and the next steps I have taken with some of the pieces.

This is a yard long piece of linen-cotton blend. It does not take the colors strongly so the color is more muted than it would have been on cotton. 

This is Ann's flat dyed ombre technique.  First, lay the fabric flat on a surface that you can dye on.  The fabric needs to already be wet with soda ash water.  Pour the dye mixture, in this case grape, on one corner or section of your fabric.  From there you just keep diluting the dye with soda ash water and move the liquid down the rest of the fabric using your hands.   Batch, rinse, wash, dry, of course.  As you see it leaves a very nice graduated color.  It is fine for cutting up to use in a quilt but a bit boring as a whole cloth piece.

I wanted to get rid of the bare white so I used the same method as before but this time I used a pale yellow.  I started in the opposite corner than I did with the grape dye.  Better but still boring.

 I decided to batik the fabric.  I used a lotus pod for the stamp and used red dye with a splash of fushia.  Wow, what a difference!  Two detail photos below.  The colors are accurate--just from different ends of the material.

The fabric is not finished. The middle is a bit too muddy to use as a whole cloth quilt.  I won't dye it again.  I think that would make it far too muddy.  Next step will be stamping.  But for now, I will let it
sit for a while till I have a better idea of where I want to go with it.