Painting with Dyes on Rayon, Lawn and Mercerized Cotton



Apple hand painted with dyes onto a fine 'Lawn' cotton fabric.

The fruit and berry series,  were painted with Procion Fiber Reactive Dyes from Dharma Trading mail order which you can find here .  I first mixed the powders into liquid concentrates and painted with them without adding any thickener. It is a little tricky to get used to painting with them, but the colors remain so vibrant that I have been experimenting with technique and different fabrics.

 

Pears on 'Lawn', Mercerized Cotton, and Rayon

LAWN FABRIC: I have been using the 'Lawn' fabric extensively for textile cards and like it for use with small projects that get ironed onto interfacing for free motion stitching. Lawn fabric accepts the dyes very well and rarely is there any failures. However, because of the looser weave, there is more spreading or bleeding of the dyes when you paint.

Red Currants on Painted onto 'Lawn' fabric

MERCERIZED COTTON: When I paint with thickened dyes, I use the excellent quality Mercerized Cotton from Dharma Trading Co. Go here to for more information. When using the unthickened dye concentrates on this fabric, it also works well and there is less bleed out from your brush strokes. What I don't like about this fabric is it's slight off white colour.

 

Apple hand painted with dye concentrates onto mercerized cotton.



RAYON: It really is more watercolour like in the way it moves on the fabric. I pressed the rayon onto iron on interfacing after painting and rinsing so that the stretching issue was minimized.

Apricots hand painted onto 'Rayon' fabric. The colours mingled well together.

Another example of dye painted 'Rayon' used with black and white commercial cotton in a quilted piece.
 

Some of my work is on the 'And Then We Set It On Fire' blog of Friday, Aug 22! They have some great ideas this week about creating texture with fabric and you can check it out here.