Painting Skies on Textile Tutorial

On pre-soda soaked cotton fabric, using dye (Procion fibre reactive dyes) liquid concentrates that I mixed from powder, I painted in some sky and clouds. To achieve the gradation from dark to light, I went over the top area twice with a dark blue and lightened the blue dye with a chemical (urea) water as I worked my way to the bottom. The clouds needed some detailing so I....

placed some mixed dye thickener (sodium alginate) in a container and....

added a small amount of blue dye.

Here is the piece after some thickened dye is brushed onto the bottoms of the clouds. 

Here is the piece after it has been cured in plastic overnight and then rinsed. You can see there is some lightening which is to be expected. What a great start this would be for a landscape art quilt.

On this piece I added some dye thickener (mixed sodium alginate) by brush to the fabric in a sun burst shape. The thickener acts somewhat as a resist.

Here it is pictured above the textured clouds. I painted around the sunburst as much as possible and the thickener kept the other dyes from bleeding into that area.

This is the completed and rinsed piece. I think a little thread painting would complete this piece.

I tried a dramatic sunset over water.

When you are painting one panel, you might as well be painting two as you've already mixed the  dye colours which is the time consuming part.

Wouldn't this sky panel be fun to add stitching or applique to. 

Sunrise over water. These rich colours were achieved by painting over each area about three times with the unthickened dye concentrates, allowing for a little time between the layers so that the dye was absorbed into the cloth. I plan to be in the studio again tomorrow and would like to paint this last image in some other colour combinations. Suggestions?