To dye another day

Today was dyeing day.  This is a day when I play with colour.

Someone asked me, why do I do these experiments with different techniques.  I do them as part of the art process.  I might not see the relevance of a particular texture or colour now, but the samples become a reference so that when I am working on a project, I can choose the technique that fits in with my theme or which makes most sense.  I suppose Icould go trawling the net for ideas, but this interrupts the creative process and nothing beats actually doing, seeing and feeling the end product myself.
Sometimes, an experiment with a technique will actually suggest a piece of work to me, so for me experimentation is the key.

Above are my basic tools.  Dye, Gloves, protective surface and dye.  I use Rit Dye because It is freely available and I loosely follow their low water immersion technique.

Here are a variety of fabrics, soaking in warm water prior to dyeing. They include hessian (the aqua fabric, also called burlap), scrim, cheesecloth, cotton and batting scraps (cotton and bamboo).

I use glass jars for my dyeing, these are around 500ml or 2 cups.  I use glass, because I find the microwave step tends to melt plastic, and glass washes clean after dyeing.

I am accurate in my measurements in that I only use a teaspoon of the dye powder in these jars.

I also usually start with the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.  This is firstly, cheaper and secondly allows for more experimentation with blending. I have added about 200ml of boiling water to the jars above.

Here I have split each dye between two jars, so I have some left to mix together later.

Here I am adding scraps of batting to the three dye baths.  You can see that the colour is being taken up already.  I microwave on high for 1 to two minutes depending on how many jars I put in the microwave.  After microwaving, I use the tongs you see (the fabric is very hot and so is the jar) to squeeze excess dye out of the fabric, rinse under cold water till the water runs clear, then dry the fabric.

Here I am mixing up orange, green and purple.  Orange is 1 part red to at least three parts yellow.  Green is 1 part blue and two yellow and purple is 1 part red to three parts blue.  What I have found, is that the red is very strong, whilst the yellow is very weak, so be prepared for this.

And here is my basic colour wheel in batting.  I like to dye batting to use in machine embellishing.  It does not always take the dye evenly and this gives it depth.

Now, I am adding cotton fabric, scrunched up.

I don't mix the fabric around, but just let the dye soak up from the bottom, then microwave.  This leaves undyed areas that can be dyed over later.

In this picture, I am doing the same with scrim, which is very useful in embellished and stitched collages.  It has some transparency, but takes up dye well.
So that is the basic technique, except of course for rinsing, drying and pressing.
So let's have the eye candy.

 Cotton, loosely bunched, dyed with red.  You will find that even though the red is stronger, it is not as colour fast.  If you know anything about quilt history, you will know also that the fastness of red has always been an issue.

 A selection of batting scraps dyed with straight colours, except for the taupe one in the bottom left, which was spotted with many colours of dye, then microwaved.

 A selection of batting scraps dyed several times with green, yellow, and a mixture of red, blue and yellow which makes brown (diluted).  In the bottom right corner are lots of tiny scraps, I use these in landscapes as grass, and tree trunks etc.

 Cotton, dyed with blue, loosely scrunched.

 Scrim, double dyed with blue and purple

 Scrim, double dyed with blue and red.

 Synthietic curtain lace and binding strip, dyed with diluted orange.  Synthetics do not take up the dye well.  I treated this sample with alum when the dye was washed out.

 Batting scraps dyed with blue.  compare them with the original dark blue batting scrap at the bottom.  The dyebecome more dilute as you use it.

 Scrim, dyed with purple and green.

 Hessian, or burlap dyed with blue and red.

 Cotton dyed with purple and green (my favourite mixture) Theone on the right used a more dilute purple mixture.

 Cotton dyed with red and yellow.  Sometimes, when dyes mix together, the dye can precipitate out, creating specks on the fabric.  This is what made the brown spots.  They make a nice texture and make it look rusted.

The final, pastel sample is using leftover green, red and yellow, now very diluted.  It is not spectacular, but I can see it in some needleturn applique roses in the near future.

I hope you enjoyed my little dyeing escapade.  As usual, this experiment simply gave me more ideas for further experiment down the track and provided a large stash of fabrics to use in collage. 
My actual dyeing time was only a few hours, but all the photography took a long time and as usual I am late posting.  But it was worth it.

The creation of art is in our own hands.

A Landscape of your own - 2

Well, I have finally gotten this tutorial together for you.  Today we will look at free motion embroidery on our landscape.

Since I am not videoing the stitiching for this tutorial, I have included short videos of the pattern on a whiteboard to help with visualising the motions.  Remember, drawing is great practice for free motion embroidery.
So far we have cut some strips and arranged and fused them.  It is a simple landscape, but a really easy one to start with and one that can be changed in many, many ways.

The first part I do is the sky.  This is a very simple treatment for sky, a sort of flattened stippling.  Look at the video of drawing this pattern on the white board.

Next the far away hills.  I have used an up and down motion to cover the whole hillside.  I used a grey thread and allowed the purple to show through.  I also used two different greys in the bobbin, which was loose so the colour spotted.  Darker towards the bottom and lighter towards the top.  The reason I use grey, or sometimes a grey blue colour here is that these colours will make the hill seem far away.  See the whiteboard video for this stitch pattern.

The next hillside was with a matching olive green thread and grey in the bobbin.  The bobbin thread was loose so it spotted from time to time, helping to meld the two into the distance.  I used granite stitch along the edge of the hill here.  Watch the whiteboard video of this pattern.

On the next hill, I again only stitched the top edge.  Variety in textures will give depth.  The thread was a slightly lighter thread with no spotting, starting to move forward in the picture with brighter colours.  The pattern here was a  horizontal zigzag (using straight stitch) down the diagonal slope.  Watch the video below for a clearer idea of the pattern.

In the layer above, I used a bright green with balanced tensions (no spotting) and drew grass shapes of uneven heights.  The white board video is below.

In this last layer, I actually did two different threads.  The one above in a dark green with the same pattern as the previous layer, and the one below, where I used a variegated thread.  The pattern is the same again, grass shapes, but I spaced them apart.  You can also see at the bottom the stitches going left to right, where I was marking time waiting for colour changes in the thread.  Again, this has led to a serendipitous change in my plan, which I will discuss, but first, here is the pattern video.

Below is my practice fabric.  I always have a practice fabric, made up the same way as my piece, so that I can test out tensions and patterns on it before I begin on my actual work.  When you change colours and bobbins and bobbin tensions frequently, you need to test everything on a similar piece of work - every time.

OK, so here is the piece in a piece of mount board 3x5 in.  The serendipitous part is that when I put this on the scanner, the fabric slipped a bit and uncovered that little bit at the bottom.  Now that I have seen that bit at the bottom, it looks like the side of a road to me, so road it shall be, and perhaps we need a fence post as well? 

All art, if it is good art, takes us on a journey, and sometimes that journey is not where we intended, but somewhere better. 

I will show you the decorative stitch tutorial tomorrow, hopefully.
vicki

Waterfall WIP

As I said, Wednesdays will be work in progress day. The day when I show you how I go about creating my fibre art pieces.
Today I worked on a landscape with waterfall collage that I designed for my Quilt uni course.

 This is the original idea sketch in my journal.  It is a simple scene with only a few elements and uses the golden rule in composition.  There is a rocky cliff on the left, A waterfall with pool in the centre, and rainforest and ferns on the right.  The ferns are in the foreground, covering the other side of the cliff.  There will also be a dragonfly buzzing around somewhere.

This is my sketch on interfacing 18x14 in.  I have already placed some hand dyed fabric for the sky.

The brown fabric, another hand dye, is what I will use for the cliffs.  On the left is a close up of my sketch of the rocks on the fabric.  This fabric will be extensively thread painted, then trapuntoed to give dimension before I put it on the background.

The green mottled fabric will go under a large amount of FME lace representing trees and ferns in the foreground on the right.

This is my tucked fabric for the pool at the bottom of the scene pinned ready to sew the ripples in, and on the right, pinned in place.  The pool is contructed of an organza overlay over a navy blue piece of cotton, so that when the ripples are sewn in, it will appear to hane depth.

These are a variety of yarns and threads which will be couched in place for the waterfall.  In the picture on the right they are sitting in place and also to the right of them, is some of my Fibre film from yesterday which will form the moss at the edge of the pool.

As you can see, Most of the pieces require some work before the piece can be assembled, and at present it is still only a plan and looks like quite a mess.
Creating art is always about give and take.  At this stage I like how I imagine the pieces will fit together, but you must always be open to change.  Our minds are always learning new things and new ways to do them, so when you look in next week, I cannot guarantee my plan will be the same, however, I hope the piece will be a little closer to being finished and starting to look like more than a mess!

Water, Water, Everywhere

You know, the main reason I set up my blog was to keep myself on track.  So I have finally made myself up a routine to follow so I get things done in all the many areas of my interests.  My Friday Focus (forgive my alliterations as I am partial to them) is where I intend to post about new techniques and experiments, be they fabric manipulation, surface techniques, sewing, etc.
This week i am posting about manipulating fabric for texture and depth.  In my Quilt Uni course, this week we are looking at scrunching fabric and I got to thinking about folding and pleating techniques.  I got an idea for pleating a strip pieced fabric to get an impression of water.
In my first experiment, I used three values of  2.5in blue fabric

I strip pieced these and pressed the allowances to the dark, then cut them in half

I joined these together

And then sewed pleats in at the seams

I then tacked the pleats up and down to create waves

Although they do look like waves, they were a little too regular for me, so I untacked it and tacked it differently, alternating the ups and downs on each row

I like this one much better, the curves are more pleasing, but it was still a bit too regular, so I did it again...

This sample was a bit more to my liking, and with a bit of Free motion and some embellishment, would be OK.
However, I still wanted more wavy sort of Textures, so I started again with some thinner 1.25 in strips

This time, I did not strictly pleat, but used a piece of iron on stabiliser smaller than the fabric and ironed random pleats into place on it

I started free motion scribbling on it, but It was too uneven and thick in places, so I sandwiched it between tulle layers and put it in a hoop

It was still difficult to free motion, but I finally got something approaching what I wanted

With a bit more embellishment (and practice)  this would be great for a sea landscape.
The next thing I wanted to make was some water in a  river pool.  My idea was to create curved tucks around a central point, however I got something quite different.

As with my second sample, I used a piece of interfacing smaller than the fabric.  then I used a basting stitch to crumple the fabric into the smaller space.  This is a slight modification of one of the techniques in the Quilt uni Course, but is called furrowing in the art of manipulating fabric by Collette Wolf (Which is my bible for such things).  It is also similar to making twisted roses in Fantastic Fabric Folding by Rebecca Wat or chopkeys in Folded fabric elegance by Rami Kim  and
here is the final sample

I did like the texture better before pressing as it was softer and more fluid.  However after some stitching to stabilise, it could be pouffed up again
I still hadn't worked out how to get my curved pool tucks, but as i was writing this it came to me, so i went and did a quick sample

I cut a wedge shape and gathered along the edges, then rolled the gathers into curves by pushing the gathers to the to and the centre of the tucks to the bottom, and voila!   With a wider wedge and some stitching in between the tucks to define them, it will be just what I want.
I have designed a small quilt/hanging to use some of the techniques in the course and I will try and remember to post it on Sunday, 'cos Sunday is sketchbook day.
Tomorrow is Stitchin' Saturday and I will look at a Free motion stitch in detail.