First IRO Inspired Experiment

Beth and I got together to try the drawing and painting with thickened dyes technique that she found on the IRO YouTube video.  Here is an image in case you forgot how magical their fabric looks.

I had found two images on the internet that I thought would translate well using the painting and drawing with thickened dyes techniques. The first was very geometric.

 I drew on the cotton fabric with a pencil first to get the overlapping shapes I wanted.  Then I scraped on the thickened dyes with a credit card.  While it was still wet I used a squirt bottle to lay down the black lines.  I then covered it with plastic, moved it to batch, then after an hour rinsed it out.  Here is the finished piece all washed, dried, and ironed.  Detail pictures follow.

See all the yucky smears? I moved the piece while it was still wet.  Not a good idea.  And did you see the black shadows around some of the lines?  That was because I rinsed it out while the dyes were still wet and they tranferred.  And did you notice the bleeding of the black lines?  I think that was caused by working wet on wet but it could just be because I squirted too much dye onto the fabric.

On the positive side, did you see the lovely shadings in the colors?  That was because I used credit cards to lay down the colors.  I was quite sloppy with the dyes and left extra dye along the credit card lines. Where the dyes were thicker the color is stronger.  Love it!

Judith