One of the top two fabrics of the year

OK, first, I can't believe that I haven't posted anything since April. APRIL!
But though brief, I am going to remedy that now. Here's a picture and a detail of one of the two best pieces of fabric that I made this year. I got a photo in the booth as I waved bye-bye. It's a polyester faille that I wrapped on a plastic chain, dipped in and poured black dye over, let dry and heat pressed. I love it. The detail shows how the black disperse splits out. The very dark areas on the edge are the outside of the chain roll. Disperse migrates as it dyes, and that's the resulting pattern. I made the buyer take it over to Nancy & Ann in the Pro Chem booth to show them. I'm a really demanding seller!

Thanks for looking!

More from the Barn and since then, part 4

OK, my worktable was a disaster. I needed to sew a bit on the tent, so I had to clean everything off. The tent project ended up to be a life lesson – don’t try to sew through adhesive Velcro! Once I got the gummy balls out of the machine it worked fine again, and I hemmed 4 scarf blanks. Even if I could find white polyester scarves to dye, the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen won’t accept them for jurying. Then I used some of my big roll of white paper to cover the dye-stained surface, and topped that with clear vinyl. It does look better.

When I processed the turquoise dye rag, I also processed another shibori pleated piece of georgette. I’m working on an elephant quilt and really want the shibori texture for his trunk. These pieces were also an outgrowth of the black sampling I showed earlier this week. The deadline for the elephant quilt is November 15, so if we don’t lose power (the hurricane is just making landfall as I write this) I’d better get some sewing done! And by the end of November, I need a lot of product for the holiday craft festival at the Elaina Fine Art Gallery. Scarves for sure, and the camo piece quilted for a start, plus some Kanzashi flower pins. More on that later!

Thanks for looking!

Shibori patterns on polyester, take 1

As long as I had the dye out, I decided to try a little reverse dyeing experiment. (Hey, we call it reverse sewing, right?) I put disperse dye on the cloth, let it dry, then bound it and rinsed it with the sprayer hose. Here’s the fabric with the dye on it, after manipulating and before heat processing:

No thickeners of any kind were used with the dye. This piece also appears in the first photo next to the colander. And here’s a picture of it after heat-pressing, washing out and ironing:

The color shift is awesome, huh? And a detail from the top edge, left of center:

I like it – it’s fairly subtle patterning, but so not-solid. What do you think? Thanks.

Handwork

Here’s a picture of what I have been working on since I got home from the shows:

You will need to enlarge the picture to see the detail; I have included an American and Euro 1-cent piece for scale. The fabric is about 19” / 48 cm square. The white vine is stitched resist, the pink bits are Kanzashi flowers. I love both of them, but separately. I’m not sure they work together. The fabric color is more celadon green than the grey that I see.
The stitched resist is totally inspired by Itchiku Kubota’s work. It reminds me why I love the results, AND reminds me why I don’t do this work on pieces for sale. I stopped counting my time at about 4 hours. However, I’m a slow, deliberate stitcher. The cloth is nice, but rather flat – I need to do more to it, or keep thinking about those flowers. Thanks for looking.

Thanks, Kay and Jan

Well, after seeing all the eye candy over on Kay Sorensen’s blog, I was inspired to take a pipe to a fat quarter. (That probably sounds very odd to the un-initiated!) Here’s the result:

Thanks for looking, and thanks for the inspiration. I hope there will be more to come!

Pipe Wrapping

Lots of recent discussion about pole wrapping, including on the DyersList and on Kay Sorensen’s blog, http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/
Here’s a picture of my 9” long, 10” diameter polypropylene pipe, wrapped with 3 1/4 yards of silk broadcloth that was previously snow-dyed. It was folded lengthwise into 6ths – about 7 1/2” wide sections, and staggered so they aren’t all directly on top of each other. Then it was wrapped around the pole and string-wrapped. I was surprised that I could get the whole length onto the pole. Next step is discharge and/or vat dye and/or overdyeing with MX – pictures to follow. Oh, the black bands at top and bottom are lengths of rubber inner tube that act like giant rubber bands to keep the fabric and strings from sliding off one end as you push from the other.

OK, after getting Vicki's comment, I realized I missed a shameless commerce moment. I have the pipe for sale on my website, http://www.dippydyes.com/index.php/products/10-inch-polypropylene-pipe-for-high-temp-shibori, where it is priced by the inch. It's just plain expensive, but you should never need a new one, either. Right now there's about 60 inches remaining. Thanks.