Sunday, July 27, 2014

Painting with Dye Concentrates


If you work with dyes, you know to keep your dye concentrates in the fridge. I have read that they start to lose their strength after about 5 weeks and as mine were in the fridge even a bit over that, I knew I needed to use them up. I had some fabric already pre soda soaked. I didn't have any sodium alginate thickener or urea water made up so thought I would simply paint with the dye concentrates.  The fabric was divided into 4 so they were manageable at about 30 X 36 inches. As I use 4 1/2" X 6 1/2" motifs for my textile cards and also for making mug rugs, I marked off 7" and loosely painted within those strips. Sometimes I thought  the sky could be water so the blue in one strip would overlap into the next set.
 
Red! I was trying to make a red background around white flowers (lower left). This really didn't work as the red dye bled too much into the petals. Working with thin dyes is a challenge but I am keen to keep trying.
Painting cotton lawn fabric with dyes. This fabric will be cut into pieces for use in textile cards and quilted mug rugs.

Those spattered dots are going to be fun to work with.

 
The fruit is on in full swing here in the Creston valley so I tried some berry and fruit motifs: blueberries, cherries, apples, pears, apricots, grapes and plums. With each piece of fruit I tried to leave a highlight and darken one side. This lead to a lot of bleeding but I was anxious to see if I could later add enough details in black thread so that the viewer would be able to identify the fruit.
Blueberries and Cherries in strips. Painted with thin dyes.

Pears.
Stay tuned to see how the fabric rinsed out and what I am doing with it. Just so you know I was pleased with the results. Remember without the sodium alginate thickener, the colours are more vibrant.

3 comments:

Win Dinn, Artist said...

Love those splattered dot flowers, and the fruit will be mouth-watering with some additional stitching. What fun!

Unknown said...

I love the dots as well! Can't wait to see what you do with them. They remind me of hollyhocks.

Laura Leeder said...

Each pattern is more delicious than the other Eileen!