Folly Fun - Pt 2

To continue our Folly adventure...day 2 was more of the same but with the addition of Eco printing and batiking. 

We prepared  our bundles - fabric and leaves tied up very tight with string and shrink wrap, and boiled them in a vinegar and water bath for @ an hour. Mary and I had recently taken a workshop in Eco printing and became very familiar with which plants impart color and which ones don't.

We also did some paper...same process and mordant. I found a little booklet that my mother had - belonged to a spoon collection and talked about the 13 original colonies. I thought it would be interesting to try and print on that.

But first....dunk it into an Indigo bath for some nice blue color.

I also had some very old magazines I thought would be fun to print on.

We made many layers of paper and leaves and in between tried different colorants - like this piece of tissue paper which imparted some great color.

We also used a Marigold which gave color from both the flower and leaves.

This beautiful long strip of China silk that Kate created was a great success. She will probably use this to make one of her beautiful books.

Here is a piece of paper printed with Sumac - a highly successful plant for imparting color. After printing, I dipped it in Indigo.

The batiking was fun although I've never been a big fan as I don't like dealing with the wax. I did it years ago and used a mixture of paraffin (very brittle) and bees wax (very pliable)...together they make a perfect blend...only problem, they are hard to remove...ironing between newspaper helps but still much of the wax stays behind. Soy wax is the answer which washes out easily but I didn't have any...next time.

Here is my piece of batik...since this pic, I've ironed and ironed to remove wax and it's still stiff as a board..so it's either bring this tiny piece to the dry cleaner which can remove it or toss it with a good lesson learned...I'm thinking the latter....but I do see soy wax in my future....More great results to follow...

Folly Fun - pt. 1

So time for another Folly retreat with Kate and Mary - great fun! It's always a whirlwind packing and planning and deciding what to do...this time it's something we haven't played with very much - Indigo, wax and shibori along with some eco printing using some techniques we learned in a recent workshop - Wow, that's a lot to pack into 3 days.

My cat Fraggle wants to come and thinks he can hide in my tiny suitcase...Ha! He can barely fit..

Well, fast forward 5 hours and we are now at Kates beautiful place overlooking the water and getting ready to dive in (not the water,...... but our shibori). We had lots to use as resists including curlers, rubber bands, clamps, plexiglass, marbles and lima beans...Are you curious yet?

We used some new PFD mercerized cotton as well as silk and some "mistakes" we wanted to overdye. My husband had cut plexiglass into small rectangles we used to make a "sandwich with fabric folded in between and clamped tight (left). The piece on the right was rolled into a long snake, rubber banded and twisted.

This piece had been lightly rusted. I then used corks cut in half to tie into little bundles....I always knew that drinking wine would pay off someday.!

And old fashioned rollers...I wonder if anyone even uses these anymore.

After clamping with rollers, the fabric was bunched into a tighter bundle and held in place with rubber bands.

Another piece just squished and held with rubber bands...quick and easy.

The pot of Indigo ready to take our fabric. It's a very fast process with great results.

The first piece sandwiched between plexiglass becomes window panes.

Some more pieces hanging to dry including my rusted and indigo t shirt.

I had a piece of charmeuse silk I wanted to try wrapping around a pole. It was a fairly large piece and hard to manipulate.

I used a large PVC pipe and string which was wound around the silk and then scrunched up.

Our pot of indigo was not deep enough to accomodate the length of fabric so we had to gently pour the dye over the fabric at the top of the pipe.  It's important not to incorporate too much oxygen back into the  pot; it will weaken the indigo....Using slow and gentle movements helps. After it was in the pot (@ 10 mins) it was removed and laid on grass to watch it turn from a yellowish green to indigo.

And the results.

I used to teach a workshop in fabric dyeing and had made lots of samples....one of the techniques I taught was 3 color dyeing and this red, orange and yellow was pretty but quite bright.

I used screws as you might be able to tell in photo above this one, and wrapped the entire length of the screw with rubberbands.....creates a flower. The smaller rings (with not as much red showing) were created by wrapping marbles.

And more results and lots more to come so please come back and visit.

Folly - Pt. 3

Well, to wrap it up....Day 3 was wonderful, productive and we were tired...oh yes.

 At sunset, the trees were a beautiful silhouette against the sky...so my plan is to crop this one and eliminate the boardwalk

 and keep this one as is and turn them into line drawings in photoshop to make into silkscreens. Think they will create a pretty frame for other things....

 And now to share some wonderful fabric....this might have been Mary's silk noil which takes a dye beautifully...

 and some blues.

 Here you can see that some of the ice crystals remain on top but gives you a feel for the wonderful crystalline effect you get with ice dyeing.

 Out time there wouldn't be complete without the infamous clean up rags that often are prettier that some of our fabric...although this time, not so sure.

 Mary had made some homemade chocolate chip cookies...

 and also some salted caramel dipping sauce to use with Granny Smith apples....yum...well by the third night we came to our senses...Is there anything better than caramel and apples....?...well yes, caramel sauce with chocolate chip cookies...It will be hard to get back to reality....

 And the best part....

 Our new stash...Mary was going to weigh hers but never heard of a final amount....Looks like a ton to me...Wonderful time and memories...
Til next time.

Folly - Pt 2

To continue our adventures with ice dyeing, the next morning and with coffee in hand, we ventured  outside to check on our bundled treasures. There was actually ice on some of them but we felt it had batched long enough to get great color. 

The buckets you see in the background were parfait dyed with 3 layers of fabric, 3 different dyes and ice in between - great results.

First rinsing is long and arduous...

into the buckets and next stop the washing machine filled with cold water.

and a spectacular view while working.

Since the trays were now free, we dove right into batch # 2. These are colors we usually don't use so it was fun to try something new.

We all brought things to overdye or give new life to. Mary had this what she called "ugly" sweatshirt (it wasn't) but she overdyed it and now it is a beauty.

Kate overdyed this monoprint she did in black and white....

This was a piece of deconstructive screen printed fabric I had...not useable and now it is better I think... also from the same tray as fabric above. With so many trays and so much fabric, we started labeling the end of the trays with colors we used - kept us organized.

This was a piece of rusted fabric on white mercerized cotton. I overdyed it with grays and blue-grays.

Another t-shirt from Mary that turned out really nice.

This was some deconstructive printed fabric I had, liked....but thought it a little boring so that went into the bucket of soda ash for over-dyeing.

The afternoon was spent doing acid dyeing which works beautifully with animal fibers - silk and wool. It is one of my favorite techniques as it is fast and you get brilliant color. Kate rigged up her propane gas and a big pot to hold fabric.  To begin, the pot had measured water, salt and a drop of synthrapol and brought to a boil.

Meanwhile fabrics were soaking in a bucket of water with just a drop of synthrapol. The soaking only takes 5 - 10 minutes depending on the weight of the silk...it needs to be very wet - through and through. Again we had colored silk fabric for overdyeing as well as white silk. 

This dye needs to be used with boiling water and an acid fixative such as vinegar or citric acid crystals. My favorite approach is to crumple the silk and put it a nylon stocking, tied tightly at both ends. Once the water comes to a boil, the dye and acid are added, stirred for a few seconds and the fabric bundle dropped in. I boil it 10 mins, turn it over and another 10 mins. The fun thing about acid dyes is that they completely expend themselves and the remaining water is close to clear.

After I open the bundle, there can be many white areas on the silk....if there is still some color in the water, I quickly dip the fabric, swish it around to allow the white areas to get some color. Often this takes literally seconds so a careful watch is needed here. Here is a scarf of Kates -  came out beautiful

I had some very drab silk noil...kind of a grayish-olive green. Kate first pleated and tied it like a Shibori piece and boiled it in Teal blue - a very dark color. You can see the wonderful dark areas in the fabric. She still wanted more color; she scrunched it in a stocking and overdyed it in Teal again. It's pretty here but this photo doesn't do it justice.

Mary who is always working in wool likes to dye it using several colors. She started with procion mx and this wool which is a blend of rayon and wool took it well, but the top layer which was fuzz appeared whitish. It was the wool part of the fabric. Mary then dipped it quickly into a boiling pot of acid dye (Turkey Red), removed and rinsed to get the above results. So this is a 2 process fabric being that it is blended with part compatible with mx dyes and the other with acid dyes - an interesting and very successful approach.

More luscious silk scarves

and fabric. Both had been dyed in a stocking, removed and rearranged in another stocking and overdyed with another blue.

And another beautiful sunset....and one more day. Hooray!