Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Hard Lessons...

....relearned. Beyond dye and soy techniques, it's important to pay attention to the hand or character of the various cloths when you are salvaging vintage or otherwise castaway cloth.

Every single one of the pieces from Round Two has been machine washed and dried twice. The water in my washing machine was still not hot enough to dissolve the soy wax. It left the cloth happily then floated to the surface to clot around the inside of the upper regions of my washing machine. Hand picking and scrubbing was the only remedy. Then, there's a big problem with the cloth.

There was a piece of flannel and two sections of something really nasty I can only describe as silk (?) noile (?). It took the dye, to be sure, but it left a residue of tan, fuzzy sludge over everything else. The only solution has been to hand wash each and every piece in a shallow pan, twice.  This is going to take some time.


3 comments:

Judy Sall Fiber Art said...

I hate when I get that waxy buildup! I have had some luck on pieces with heavy wax by filling a bucket with very hot water and dipping the item back and forth in it to melt the wax, then rinsing quickly to remove the wax water before it re-solidifies.

Deb Lacativa said...

It wasn't the wax this time. It was some kind of fuzzy crud that you could lift with tape if you had nine miles of it and the time and energy. The hand rinsing is getting the job done. Tedious, but necessary.

Anonymous said...

I really appreciate you sharing experiences that did not turn out perfectly the first time.