An Ann Johnston's Grand Finale

Judith again but for the last time.  Here are the surface designed fabric I made with Beth in February using Ann's suggestions for hoses, chains, and ropes.  Oh my!

 

 This first one was wrapped around a chain diagonally, scrunched up, placed in purple dye for 15 minutes, then soda ash was added to the dye.  Here is a picture of it batching.

 One yard length, salvage to salvage width, cotton fabric.

The purple dye was an overdye. The original dye was a soy wax pattern on a silk screen.  It was just too ugly!  But with the purple on top of it, I see koi under ripples of water.  What do you see?

  One yard length, salvage to salvage width, cotton fabric.

Okay, this one is still horrible but I think it can be added to and improved.  This was a rope wrap.  Notice that the texture is not as strong as the pattern made by the chain.  Just like the first piece, this is an overdye of a particularly ugly piece.  For some reason I thought scraping straight dye powder onto fabric would give a great affect.  Not so much.  The texture overdye did soften the strong splotches.  I think I need to stamp an equally strong pattern in an equally strong color to counteract the fushia.  But now I at least have a great background for all the foreground clutter I need to add.  I am open to suggestions.  Here is a wonderful detail short of the texture.

This last one is my most and least favorite. As a whole fabric piece, it does not work but the detail shots are wonderful.  I can either add something and make a better whole cloth design or I can cut it up and use it as is.   Do you have a preference or suggestion?

One yard length, salvage to salvage width, cotton fabric.

This is another overdyed piece.  The original had the soy wax circles with blue and orange dye paste spread on with a credit card.  You can see some of the lines from the applications.  I then wrapped it around a hose, scrunched, dyed, soda ashed, and batched. Ugh but here are the detail shots.

I hope that: 1) I have inspired you to try some of Ann's techniques and 2) don't throw away a "failure" but try, try again.  It may just need a second or third or fourth technique or overdye.

Have Fun!

Parfait Dyeing--Quilter Beth

I finally had a chance to try parfait dyeing. I really enjoyed doing it; it was a simple process. I think the outcome would have been more varied if I had used more colors of dye. I just used what I had left over from another dye session—red, a small bit of fuchsia, two blues, and a yellow. The blues were VERY similar. I used two fat quarters of PFD fabric and some of the pieces I had worked on when we did the soy wax resist. ( I just wanted to see what they would look like with this parfait dyeing.)

These are some of the fabrics I started with...

This was a "wipe up" cloth with brush strokes from my dye-mixing brush from my last dye session.

The two fabrics above are from the soy wax resist session. In addition to these, I had two fat quarters of white PFD fabric, a piece of off-white gauze with circles on it, and another piece of soy wax resist fabric.

Here is what they looked like in the containers...

On the left--red/fuchsia and blue; top right--the two blues; bottom right--yellow, red, then blue

I used yellow, red, and a blue for these…

This was the orange, soy wax resist piece. 

This was a fat quarter of PFD fabric. 

This started as off-white gauze with circles.

I used red with the little fuchsia I had, then I added a blue to it for these…

This was the "wipe-up" cloth. 

This was another piece of the soy wax resist fabric.

I used the two blues for these…

This was the green, soy wax resist fabric. 

This began as a fat quarter of white PFD fabric.

I liked doing this, and I like the outcome. I think I'll be doing this again.