Category Archives: surface design

Seeing Orange

Posted on by under Dyeing

I know, it’s supposed to be seeing red. But today I’m seeing orange. I needed orange decorations for a purse I am refashioning and I had found some little crocheted pieces at the thrift store. They were white and actually had some sort of glue in them when I bought them. I just soaked them in water and that took care of the stiffening agent. Today, I dyed them orange and since I had some extra dye, I put in a little fabric as well.

 This photo about blows your eyes out – the orange is really bright.

Here’s one you can see a little better. I’ll show you the bag after I finish.

 This photo is of 90# cheese cloth. I dyed both pieces of fabric in a baggie.

This piece of fabric is a combination of silk and cotton. The way it is woven, it has silk on one side and cotton on the other. I’m sure it will look more interesting when it has been ironed.

I spent most of today working on a new blog/website on WordPress. I am going to move this blog as soon as it is finished. It will be much more up to date than this blog. I wanted to have all my blogs/websites in one place so I decided to go with WordPress. I hope to have it finished in the next couple of weeks. I will let you know the new address. I appreciate all my followers/readers and I hope that you’ll like the new site.

Where’s the Purple??

Posted on by under Dyeing
I needed to dye some 30/70 wool/rayon felt for my upcoming stitch class. My initial plan was to dye a rich chocolate brown. We will be using the felt to make beaded books and I was planning on using gold beads. Luckily,  I remembered that this type of felt loses a lot of color when dying with Procion dyes and the brown might not have been recognizable. So I decided to go with red violet and violet.

 Here’s the felt after the dye was applied.

 I made several pieces in case I didn’t like one of them. And I went really dark because I didn’t want pale colors. Since this is a mix of plant and animal fibers, it is hard to get the colors to take well.

 This is the first piece I rinsed out. Eeeeek! It’s pink. Not at all what I wanted. It batched for four hours.

 Here is it up against one that hasn’t been rinsed. The blue just washed away. So I left the last two pieces for 48 hours before rinsing.

As you can see, the bottom two pieces still have a little purple left. But not at all what I was hoping for. So I decided I would put the felt into a blue acid dye bath. I redyed them for an hour simmering in blue dye.
I am still  unhappy with the result. It is a bit more purple but closer to maroon. At least it’s not pink. I may have to resort to Dye-Na-Flow paint if I really want purple. I still have to fuse a layer of organza to the surface so perhaps I’ll go with a really dark organza and that will solve the problem. My hands are all blue but the felt isn’t, sigh.

Sun Printing

Posted on by under surface design
It’s still sunny here in Montana so my local group decided to do some sun printing before summer is over.

 It’s a really simple process. You can use just about any kind of fabric paint. It helps if you wet the fabric a bit first.

 You then paint your fabric and lay items on top. Leaves work really well but you can use anything flat.

 Then put your piece out into the sun. It’s better on a calm day when the wind isn’t blowing.

 Here’s a partially painted fabric.

 Here’s a bunch of pieces drying in the sun.

 Louise and Bunny are busy working.

 This is one of my pieces that I used pieces of bark.

 This is Carole’s piece.

 Here is one of Louise’s where she used sticks.

 This was done by Sandy who said she couldn’t do this kind of stuff (she was visiting) but look how well she did.

 This is Jan’s piece.

 Here’s one of Louise’s – I really like this one.

 This one I put Wensleydale locks on it.

 This one is covered with threads.

 Here are some drying in the sun.

 Washers

 More sticks

 Scrunched fabric

 A fern

 and buttons. We had fun and now we have more fun fabric to use.

Dyeing Day

Posted on by under Dyeing, level 2 stitch class

 I spent most of the day yesterday dyeing 24 scarves to sell at the store. I used Procion MX dyes and actually they were a bit old. The colors were not quite as expected but still nice. I like to use fiber reactive dyes because you don’t have to steam them but I don’t like how much you have to rinse them. The acid dyes are really nice because the dye exhausts and you don’t have to rinse out all that extra dye.  And then of course there is the ironing part…

The other thing I did yesterday was to free motion machine stitch this tree on tulle. I then cut it out and stitched it down to a piece of linen. This is part of my homework for stitch class. We have also been working on “botanicals”, sketching flowers and leaves and then stitching them on the machine. I’ll show you  more soon. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Picasso Dogs and New Silk Screens

Posted on by under surface design

 I met with my surface design group on Friday and we had fun playing with a drawing exercise and making new silk screens. We used the EZ Screen Print sheets and Bunny’s Yudu machine.

 This is the result of the Picasso dog drawing exercise. I heard about this idea from a podcast that I listened to here. It might have been the one from Diana Trout but I can’t remember. Anyways, you keep turning the page and adding an eye, a foot, a tail, a snout etc. Then you connect the lines to make a Picasso dog. Mine is the bottom left one. It was fun for our Picasso exercise we did this past month. I don’t seem to have a photo of my Picasso tractor sculpture that I made. I’ll have to show you that later.

 Here are some of the silk screens we made. Most of us were going for background type texture to add to our projects. My four are on the left. Several of mine look like bark, can you imagine? Jan’s are in the middle and Louise’s are on the right. Isn’t her cheesecloth one cool?

 These are Carole’s. The one on the bottom right is my favorite.

 And here are Bunny’s on the left. Her flower on the top left printed out really well. I am planning on doing something with these screens soon so more photos to follow.