Quick picture of discharged shibori

This is a piece of Testfabrics black broadcloth that I discharged with Thiox and over-dyed with MX. It was folded in half and wrapped around a pipe, then bound with thread. I’d love to do this again with a really sheer fabric.

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.

Marks from holes

Here are two quick pictures of my little swatch and the colander that made the marks:

This picture shows the piece, which started out a coral color, in the colander, plus another piece that started white drying next to it. Both are dyed with turquoise.

The second picture shows the sample after heat pressing with the colander in the background. I really am not fond of turquoise & coral together, but the hole pattern is really neat.

The large piece in the upper picture is  an experiment that is still in process. I will post pictures when it’s done. Thanks for looking!

Off to Cincinnati in June

I’m trying a new-to-me show with ‘The Original Creative Festival’ in Cincinnati. I’ll be in booth 106, as of this writing, and I am going to be introducing some new fabrics for garment sewers, as well as my snow-dyed and discharged fabrics, polyesters and wool roving. And I will be teaching ‘Dye Boot Camp’ again – come and join the fun!

Shoes!

A lot of my friends at quilt shows check out my shoes. I’m glad they do, because I have fun decorating them with Tsukineko Inks. Here’s how I do it. I didn’t take photos as I decorated these shoes, so I’ve recreated one of the flowers step by step, below. Of course the blank page is what can be hard to get past. My inspiration came from traditional Baltimore Album designs.

		Shoes! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I started by marking the center of the flower, then added seven dots around the outside for petal points. To be safe, you can do this in pencil first, then follow up with ink. Fill in the center and then draw some funky petals. Next roughly fill in the petals with the lightest color.  Then I brought in  three additional colors, using the darkest color around the center. The white areas that remained were filled in with the original pink color, then I drew some rough leaf shapes in light green between each petal.  Then another ring of petals, some filling in with a light and a dark green and voila – it’s a flower!

Since coming back from the two spring shows, I have been working on the website. All my Tsukineko products are on-line with updated inventory quantities. And right now, until midnight on March 31, 2012, you can get 13% off your Tsukineko purchases at DippyDyes.com. 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.

Two destinations in New Jersey

Found this link on the Surface Design website: Textility, at the Visual Arts Center of NJ - that page has a slideshow.  It's located about 20 miles from the Quilt Fest of NJ. Both will be open March 1 - 4, so plan on going!