Keep in mind this technique may not work unless your humidity is high like here in Georgia. Do you know why you put a few grains of rice in the salt shaker? To keep the salt dry. At high humidity salt and sugar crystals will take on a bit of moisture from the air - simple kitchen science.
I started with a half cup of rock salt in a small plastic container. Left the lid off overnight, out on the deck. Readied a piece of damask soaked in soda ash on my work table. Dust mask plus wet neckerchief and goggles in place. No breezes. (I do all my dye work outdoors- ignore safety rules at your own peril). Folded a quarter teaspoon of dye powder into the salt. The dye sticks to the damp crystals. As I work, I change colors by just adding more dye in to what's already in the container.
With a spoon, I sprinkled the salt/dye mix over the fabric. Rolled the fabric up lengthwise and then coiled the roll. More or less manipulation of the coil at this point will blur and distribute the dye or not. Pop the coil in a zip loc baggie and let it bake in the sun for the rest of the day. I rinse the fabric by hand in a cold water tub and follow up with a hot water machine wash with Dawn and machine dry.
Where does the sugar come in? I ran out of salt! Sugar works just as well as salt.
Jimmy was sort of half sprung from the hospital today. The medical doctor cleared him to leave pending the surgeon's approval but the surgeon was too busy running through the halls with a chain saw. He finally popped by after I had gone home promising to spring my man in the morning.
I nipped out in the middle of the afternoon to come home and see what had become of a batch of damasks that I had pushed into a stew of soda ash the day before Jim's surgery just about a week ago. What was I thinking? When I opened up the container I half expected 20 gallons of mush but the cloth seemed OK so I went ahead and sugar dyed it all. I have a "what if" in mind for some of this fabric. Nothing fully formed, just a notion.
I was busy elsewhere so daily life has taken a back seat. My pool has been sadly neglected this past week and all manner of strange things just came out of the skimmer and dip net. I just hope I can get back in the water to do the real cleaning. The water has cooled down a lot and hurricane Fay will be drenching us in a day or so.
Here's what came out of those jars from yesterday's post. So full of joy!
I left them hanging over the railing just before the rain got serious.
When I went outside to retrieve them and watch Jimmy cooling off in the pool (despite the thunder and lightning) there was
a tag team of hummingbirds staking out the feeder on the lower deck. It warmed my heart to witness both.
I've finished cherry-picking the dyefest results. These are the ones I've gravitated to over the past few days. Perhaps a reaction to the heat and humidity?
There has been no real work for the new Featherweight as yet but this fabric is making me think of piecing something functional.
In the meantime, the rest of the harvest has been posted over to the Hotcakes site for sale.
This china platter hasn't seen a turkey's backside in years mostly because it weighs at least five pounds all by itself.
These are the last of the mystery cottons and a few new colors that I cooked up from the original concentrates.
You can always count on a critic or two at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx.
Now it's time to "clean" the pool.
Awright....I'm going upstairs to iron. It's only 99 degrees, sure, why not. Hey! Gunga Din! over here with that water skin if you please!
I want to thank everyone who anted up their two, twenty and 99 cents regarding my photography quandary. Combing through the wisdom I think I've distilled an answer.
It's going to involve my Goodman building me a portable hard wall and some cooperation on the part of the weather but the job will get done and the results will be what I have been looking for.
Some outstanding results of a process that involves dirty rock salt .
This is going straight into the private stock.
We're expecting some wicked weather shortly so I decided to hatch these out early, wash and dry them and then scuttle upstairs to the studio and get to work.
"Frida Brings Home the Bacon"
Any of you who are addicted to watching the barn owl cams will appreciate this one. After the mayhem and cannibalism of last season I only peek in from time to time. Still, nature's ongoing drama is compelling.
I've jumped up to a 12"x12" format playing with shapes and space. Still very aware that the details and patterns of the much of the fabric that I have just made will not translate or work for much larger pieces.
I might have to (gasp) make some more fabric with just big stuff in mind but the trouble is, in the past those pieces have become whole cloth pieces as I am unable to break down the dye painted design elements. Start with smaller pieces of fabric?
Once again, Jude at Spirit Cloth leads the way with something charming and thoughtful. I sat at the machine for the first time in weeks last night and then spent nine innings hand stitching this tidbit.
Through Jude's post I tracked back to the latest at the Ragged Cloth Cafe which has given us much to think about - that which appeals to us visually is an evolutionary response to what's good for us.
What I want to know is,what does this say about people like myself who have never had a single qualm about critters of any stripe. Did our ancestors survive because we ate better? Did our ancestors come from another planet?
Wrapping up the dyefest is this little piece that I pleated and machine stitched. Did I not recently swear that I would never do this again? How quickly we forget.
I've just finished shooting and posting 16 new pieces of fabric to Like Hotcakes. Making them was
a whole lot more fun and there's a lot more to do. Take a look ->
Of course I kept as least as much for my own stash. I'll post the pictures of that tasty stuff as they come into the palette for projects. It's wonderful to take a piece off the line, iron it and start daydreaming about how it will work with X, Y or Z who are waiting to get on with the work.
I was rooting around in boxes in the ex- studio and found another damask tablecloth that had been dyed by some lunatic. It called out for soy wax and overdyeing so that's been added to the morning agenda.
Lately, neither do I for any extended period of time. You would think I would need a good night's sleep after yesterday. After I finished drying and folding all the new fabric, I decided it would be a sin to waste the beautiful weather ironing.Instead, I got busy with the annual Cleaning of the Pool, easily on a par with the Cleaning of the Aegean Stables.
This year I beat the tree frogs to their egglaying but they were not too busy to hang around on the walls of the pool kibbitzing as I worked. In the foreground, Jim's cast iron frying pans are hard at work rusting a couple of pieces of fabric that got left behind.
The studio is in chaos with piles of fabric everywhere waiting to be worked on. Tomorrow.
Chag Sameach - Happy Passover !
This beats using a dryer any day but I'm real glad that I didn't throw out my old ironing board. You know, the kind you can adjust for ironing while sitting. My grandmother is spinning in her grave.
The rusty business in the middle here is one of my favorites.
The spotty looking things are in a preliminary state. Painting comes next.
Some of these things look like skins taken from non-terrestrial beings.
My "Custom Blood" recipe worked out quite nicely. I usually don't dally much with reds unless they are close to neutral.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. All delicious.
I finally got a chance to get the rest of that fabric into the dyes. It was too beautiful a day to NOT be outside working on something but now I'm pooped and will save the rinse-wash-dry-iron boogie until tomorrow.
Best to batch anyway.
The making of it anyway! After I get home from the office today I'm going to be incommunicado for a while. I forgot how much fun magik-making was.
left - Worlds Away 25"x18"
below - Mystic Cheerioz 17"x23"
I returned to the studio last night and started rummaging through all the wonderful commercial cottons I was recently gifted with.
My intention for these fabrics is to transform them any way I can. These two fat quarters have been discharged and then hand painted with textile paint with some iridescent powder mixed in for sparks. They've been heat set and I don't really want to see if they are wash fast since my intention is to use them only for Art pieces that will never be washed or dried. The base fabrics are all excellent quality cotton that you will probably recognize if you look hard enough. As these accumulate and strike my fancy (or not) I will start moving them over to Like Hotcakes! where they will be for sale.
Okay - here's what excites me about dyeing my own fabric. This black is just like most black horses - from a distance they look inky. Step up close to pat a flank and you discover that their color is more likely a layer of dark brown, rusts, with black dusted over the top.
In this instance, iridescent paint too. Behind that one is one of the two rusted pieces that came out so well.
The teal damask has an overlay of iridescence too.Impossible to photograph but still gorgeous.
Then again there's a fool at every party!
FOF08 - day 2 (finally)
A good time to cleanup, break, think about lunch (hey! I've been up since 6am) and wait for the fog to break and the temperature to head from the present 51 to the promised 70 and sunny.
These are dye concentrates and I rarely take one color straight out of the bottle without spicing it with one or two others. All unique, all the time.
Like that Custom Blood? A new mix that includes the dreaded Fuchsia 308. We'll see how the fabric likes it.
