Folly - The Results

We had some great results...turned some bad pieces into good pieces and discovered new things. We love to experiment and think the most fun part is when you discover something wonderful has happened after all the trial and error...that's not to say, it will happen again...but that's okay.

Mary had the best results working with wool and plant material...this is a piece of wool folded in half with plants in middle...One half, the one tightest to the plants has a very strong print, the other side does not...Both are great!

So remember the plexiglass squares sandwich with fabric in the middle...on the right - the results!

Here are the old fashioned hair curlers we used to sleep on...how did we ever do that? They have been clamped sporatically on the fabric and then scrunched using rubberbands.

The results are pretty cool I think...lots of Indigo color and visual texture.

The piece on the left was folded; a round disc on top and bottom served as a resist. The one on the right started with white fabric that had been lightly rusted. The rust is reading yellow in the picture but it is rust. Fabric was wrapped around short corks and marbles....kinda looks like flowers.

This piece was a very coarse piece of burlap which was scrunched...took the Indigo well.

The piece on the left was a pale tone on tone rubbed vigorously with live Indigo plant - a very pale color resulted. It was then folded and dipped in Indigo. The piece on the right was heavily rusted and dipped in Indigo...think that's my favorite one. The one below on right was wrapped on the pole on the left.

Eco printing on a piece of China silk above...maple leaves (R) and Eucalyptus on left

Eco printing on pages from an old booklet....

Water color paper and Eucalyptus leaves... Maple and Eucalyptus on Khadi paper on bottom

I have a collection of old magazines...this was a page which I hoped would work. It's very thin and thought it might fall apart in the "boiling" process...

but it held up and looks pretty cool...(on left) - on right is Sumac on paper, edges dipped in Indigo.

And a rusted t-shirt I had...needed some Indigo to jazz it up...I really liked the results. I was in Macys the other day and a lady came up to me...said she liked it and asked where I got it....(happy dance)..well at least she didn't think I was a hippy from the 60s.....

And last but not least...the sunset...what would our retreats be without this beautiful ending to a perfect day...

along with great girlfriends...!

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.