Ice Dyeing with Shibori Folds

Ice dyed Cotton Lawn Fabric

Instructions:

• Soak light to medium weight cotton fabric in a soda ash soak (1 cup soda ash to 1 gallon of warm water) for 20 minutes
• Using gloves, squeeze out the excess liquid and lie the fabric flat on a large table. Fan fold it with about 1 inch pleats keeping it as even as possible.
• Outside on a hot day, I then placed the folded cloth on a screen. I used a length of white wire shelving you find at hardware stores with a length of tulle like fabric on top of it. This allowed the water to flow through it as the ice melted. The shelving was elevated on some plastic tubs to catch the drips

• The ice was piled on top of the fabric.
• Using a dust mask, to avoid inhaling the dust particles I sprinkled powdered fiber reactive dyes across the folds. The colours for each piece were carefully selected to create specific colour combinations.

• Everything was covered with plastic and left to sit for 24 hours.
• Then each cloth was rinsed quickly in cold water under the tap and placed in a bucket of cold water for several hours to allow excess dye to run out. After that the excess water was squeezed out and the fabric was washed in hot water using a textile detergent, then rinsed in cold water until the water was clear.
• The fabric was then pressed dry. 

You can find some of my hand dyed fabrics at Puffin Designs - Fantastic Things for Interior Design .

Tutorial: What is Needed for Painting on Fabric with Dyes

 

A fat quarter newly out of the dye studio

Dyeing fabric with Procion Fibre reactive dyes requires a bit of measuring and mixing. Dharma Trading online company has what you need as well as information about direct dye painting. Click here for their site.

Click here for another one of my blog posts about painting with dye concentrates. here is another post about drawing on top of splashed dyes.

Measuring lemon yellow dye powder.

The products and mixtures that are needed for the direct application method of applying dyes. The green bottle in the upper left is mixed urea water and beside it is a print paste. The three packages on the back wall are sodium alginate powder for thickening the dyes, soda ash powder for presoaking fabric and urea pellets for mixing the dyes. The four dye powders I use are lemon yellow, fuchsia, turquoise, and better black. I use glass jars for mixing the dye concentrates and for storing them in the fridge (be sure to label well)

 The apple, pear and grapes were painted using dye concentrates. Please not I did not thickened the dyes for this application, preferring a loose look.

 Well you can't spend everyday in the dye studio or what would you ever have for inspiration?

My border collie on a walk in the desert.

Jeeping in the desert.

Jeeping in the desert when it didn't go so well???

Next post will include the winner of the draw with her hand painted fabrics and a newly completed commission of hand dye painted fabrics.

Step by step completion of a plein air painting

Plein air painting in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains recently, I was able to spend a lovely afternoon along the side of a country road painting this amazing vista. There was only room for two of us artists as the road was a bit narrow down in a dip in the road but we got set up quickly to take advantage of the light. Unfortunately there was a curve in the road one way so the traffic didn't get much time to slow down once they saw us, which made for some dust rolling over us. Oh well. For a photo of the scene click here





Completed Watercolour Painting



About 90 % of the painting was completed on location, and this is the painting I came home to the studio with. Plein air paintings have a freshness to them which an artist must struggle to maintain when finishing them at home. I will give you a step by step account of the decisions I am making as I complete this painting under idea conditions in the studio.

 I darken around the aspen tree trunks in the middle ground to focus the viewers eye there. The front aspens seem a bit bare to me so I add some leaves. The blue sky colour appears too isolated so I brought some of that ultramarine blue colour into other parts of the painting including to the shade at the base of the middle ground aspens and into the shadows of the grass in the foreground.

The middle row of trees were given more form to their leaves by darkening the bottom with dark green and strengthening the middle green while taking care to leave a little highlight along the tree tops. As well dark green was added behind the highlighted white tree tops to make them stand out.

The foreground was given stronger colour by adding burnt orange especially around the left two trees.

I lightened the middle ground tree tops by lifting out the paint. The trunks of the three trees in the front are toned from bright white to focus the attention on the whitest white of the middle ground aspens.

I deepened the blue in the shadows of the middle ground aspens and added some blue in the shadows between the trees. Lime green is added on the right side in a line behind the warm golden and burnt orange swath.

More branches were added with a palette knife as details to the front trees with some of the branches pointing to that little grove of aspen in the middle ground.

An opaque lemon yellow was added to fill in between leaves to better group them which is what you see when you look at a leaves on a tree.
I thought a little more lime green was needed on the right side to balance the same colour on the left foreground. It seems important to stop before the looseness of the plein air painting is lost.



Another watercolour painting  that is 90 % or so completed on location. This is the middle ground group of aspen from the painting above. I really would have liked to get up closer to them but there were two barbwire fences in between and also private property. Where to go from here with this painting. I love the looseness and brightness of this little sketch that was completed in about fifteen minutes after the first one was painted in about an hour and a half.



Free Motion Stitching Tutorial: from Mug Rugs to Tool Mats?

Mug Rug: 'Pussy Willows for Spring'
created by me, Eileen Gidman
using a piece of my hand dyed fabric (pussy willows)

This last 2 weeks I have made several mug rugs. Click here for the first post about them. Mug Rug Tutorial . They seem to be a perfect gift for a woman but it got me thinking what could I make for the guys? A couple of years ago I gave my husband some scraps for shop rags. I was surprised to find that he was using a practice piece of free motion stitching that I included in those scraps as a mat for laying the tools out that he was using for a project. Just last week, I saw he was still using it so I thought why not make a tool mat and practice my free motion stitching at the same time. Here is what I did.

 



 I cut two pieces of lightweight denim about 13 X 15" as well as a piece of thin batting the same size. After sandwiching the batting between the wrong sides of the denim fabric, I pinned it in several places.

 First I stitched the feature box in the upper right section and left it until I had warmed up a little with some free motion stitching practice.

 Details of free motion stitching.

Tool Mat?
'Mountain Bluebird'
12 1/2" X 15"

When I felt ready, I stitched the bird by first lightly sketching it on the fabric, in pencil, from a reference photo on my Ipad. You could just as easily print off a copyright free photo and trace on a design if you are not used to drawing.

 

Then I continued sewing free motion designs. Yes, there are a lot of patterns available for free motion stitching on-line but I preferred to let my hands go with the ideas I thought up. Before starting a new design, I outlined a box with a straight stitch. Most of these boxes were just eyeballed to keep the artistic nature of the piece.

 

The backside worked out fairly well too. As it is going to the shop, I didn't bind it but simply anchored the edges with 3 lines of straight stitches. There you have it, a nice little gift for the men in your life and some free motion stitching practice to boot.

Wine Bag Quilted Tutorial using Hand Painted Fabric

Using one of my 3 1/2" X 8 1/2" hand dye painted rectangle,  I made this wine bag using a pattern from Pieceful Designs. Click here to find the pattern www.piecefuldesigns.com .


Wine bag with my
hand dye painted fabric.





Sew on strips and the main bag fabric.

Layer light cotton, batting and top piece

Backside of free motion stitching of the grapes.

Quilting lines added to the main part of the bag.

Quilt a square for the bottom and cut out a circle.

Sew in the bottom. Sew a lining and insert inside your wine bag with wrong sides together. Bind the top edge and add handles and a button detail. Aren't those purple buttons the greatest!


Completed insulated wine bag. Nice for carrying your own wine or for gift giving.