Sunday, December 2, 2012

Painting with Liquid Dye Concentrates in Two Steps

Hand (dye) Painted Cotton


Unlike most of my posts, the following description is somewhat technical and suited to someone who has some experience in dyeing fabric.

My first 6 pieces are washed after a few weeks of being away from the dye studio. This time instead of using the thickened fibre reactive dyes, I painted these soda-soaked cotton pieces with liquid dyes that I premixed into concentrates. I lightened or mixed the concentrates as required. After painting, the pieces were batched to cure.
 
Normally when using thickened dyes I would next rinse the pieces. Rather this time as there was no alginate (dye thickener) to act as a resist, I repainted details on top using thickened dyes with some soda ash (activator) added to the dye. Some of the details were added using thickened dyes in a bottle with a nib and additional darks were added in thickened dyes by painting with a brush. Again the pieces were placed in plastic (batching) to cure. Here are two of the rinsed results.



2 comments:

Win Dinn, Artist said...

The technicalities may be beyond me, Eileen, but the results certainly are glorious. I especially like the floral one, and salute you for that!

Laura Leeder said...

I agree! Painted Cotton pulled me in immediately! Very pretty!