color on cloth

Below are the results of the second round of trying to dye with the tickseed sunflowers.  Carried on from here.  The two smaller pieces of fabric on the left are silk crepe and haboti silk.  The other pieces are various cottons.  These have been washed.  No mordants or adjuncts were used.  Just boiling water poured over the flowers, cloth added, and the jars left to sit in the sun for a week or so.  Perhaps they will fade somewhat, but that's okay.  I'm really pleased that I got this much color.  The cloth I bundled with the spent flowers didn't do much.  That jar eventually got moldy.  (Sorry these photos were taken on a glass table top outside.  There are some odd reflections.)

Some indigo dipped pieces.  (Disclaimer--not a fermentation vat--reduced with Thiourea Dioxide.)

The first round of black walnut.  I threw in a few pieces of cloth when I was simmering the hulls.  Across the top silk crepe, haboti silk, and two pieces of silk organza.  At the bottom, a piece of damask napkin and a very thin piece of cotton.

Below is the cloth I used to strain the walnut hulls after the first pot was simmered.  It was a piece of an old muslin apron that was my mom's.  After I washed it, I popped the hem seam threads and discovered that interesting pattern that looks like neck vertebrae.  That happened along the bottom of the hem crease.

 A second black walnut pot was simmered on the camp stove today.  The weather has been perfect.  A touch of fall is in the air.  

just looking

Thanks Mo, for the suggestion to not just think about this, but to do it.  The image from the previous post... 

and manipulated...

Not quite what I had in mind...  But somewhat interesting.  These were manipulated with iPhoto editing, which is pretty rudimentary.  I had Photoshop Elements on our desktop computer but we had a hard drive crash a few months ago.  It looks like the application is gone and needs to be reloaded.  Or loaded to my laptop.  Ugh.  So, just trying this for now and it is interesting enough.  I seem to like the red tones.  And there could be a creature here when positive space and negative space shift a little.  The black circles are knots in the log wall.  Even the size and placement of those is pleasing to me.  I kind of like this last image which looks like something emerging from another dimension.  Or do I just read and watch too much sci-fi?  Ha!

Not sure where this is going. 

But... today there are enough black walnuts.  I whacked the hulls with a rock and put them in a pot of water to soak.  The water turned dark immediately.

to dye or to stitch and to want

I dye or I stitch.  I don't seem to do both at once.  (Well, except for the very long on-going steeps or compost experiments.)  Why is that?  Shouldn't they go hand in hand?  Shouldn't one be for the purpose of the other?  Dyeing seems to be an end in itself for me.  I do it obsessively when I do it.  What happens or doesn't happen, the dyed or marked cloth is the end product.  And sometimes those cloths become very hard to cut into, to make into something.  I'm just observing this.  It feels okay, even if it seems odd.

And I'm really having so much trouble with the new focus on color at What if Diaries.  I'm just looking.  No cloth placements or combinations seem just right.  No stories are forming.  I'm stuck.  But then this...

I saw this on the wall one morning.  The morning light coming in the window upstairs through trees and leaves, through glass things hanging in the window, through the loft, to the wall downstairs in the kitchen.  And I was entranced by it.  The balance of light and dark.  The composition of it.  I grabbed my phone and tried to captured it before it changed.  I love it.  I want this on cloth.  I want this with such an intensity of want.

yellow

On September 2 tickseed sunflower was prolific, a sea of yellow.

I had tried pounding these into cloth a few years ago and got really nice patterning and color.

I gathered a big armful from the edges, where they were drooping over the path.  You couldn't even tell I had taken any.  A little boiling water, a piece of cotton cloth, and out in the sun.

It was hot.  And I forgot.  A little over a week.  The liquid got really dark.

But... Wow... This is rinsed and dried.  I love the color.

So I spread the soggy plant material on another piece of cotton, rolled it up, bound it, soaked it in vinegar, and put it back in the dark liquid.

 The blossoms are beginning to fade, but there were still some blooming.  And so another jar.  This time two pieces of silk and two of cotton, boiling water and set out to brew.

I had a very interested assistant today.

I'm thinking about Dorothy and Oz today and that line...  "if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there..."  Because if it isn't there, do I really need it to dye with?  Well except indigo perhaps...  I checked on the black walnuts today. I found seven.  There are a lot still way up in the trees.  I'm waiting.  There's gobs and gobs of smartweed.  I've been reading about that.  There will be wild persimmons...

Oh.  And I turned 60 this week.  So glad that is over with.  The anticipation of it was awful.  Now it just is.  And it's fine, especially considering the alternative.

wrapping

From this...

which kept reminding me of this... 

to this...

As my friend Beth (the "other" Beth B) commented on my last post, vinegar can be used with Procion MX dyes on silk instead of soda ash.  I did a little research and found that heat is recommended if you do this.  So this was put in a baggie in the sun for a few hours to batch after the dye concentrate was applied and vinegar added.  Success! 

dyeing a rainbow ~ low water immersion

*** As time goes on, I'm feeling more and more conflicted about using chemical dyes.  I do love coloring cloth but I'm feeling too defensive about it.  It's one of those issues that everyone must decide for themselves.  And while Procion dyes are generally considered safe (with standard safety measures in place) what does safe mean?  There are plenty of products on the shelves of stores that I have decided I will not use, will not consume.  And yet, when we began focusing on color in the "What if Diaries", I had this strong urge to dye my own colors.  And I do already have some dyes.  So.  At this point I'm not sure I'll ever buy more dyes, but I'm using what I have.  A few people have asked me about the Procion dyes.  So I'll explain what I did below.  (Your mileage may vary, proceed with caution, decide for yourself, etc.) ***

This was an experiment to see how the dyes (Procion MX) would react with three different types of cotton cloth.  The top row is cloth from old flour sack dish drying towels.  The middle row is new bleached muslin.  The bottom row is cut up old damask napkins.  The damask napkins are a little glossy and the dish cloth, a looser weave, is more matte finish.  But all in all the colors turned out very similar across the three types of cloth.  (The photos were taken in the shade, but there is a bit of dappled light coming through in places, making brighter spots.)   

If you are not familiar with Procion MX dyes, they do need the addition of soda ash to react with the fabric.  You can mix the soda ash with the dye solutions, but they have a short life once the two are together.  I prefer to mix liquid dye concentrates, which I can use for a week or longer, and to add the soda ash solution when I am ready for the color bond to the cloth.  You can work with a lot of variations.  You can wet the fabric with water, add liquid dye concentrate, then add soda ash solution.  This allows the dye to mingle with the cloth before it is "set" with the soda ash solution.  You can wet the fabric with the soda ash solution and then add dye concentrates.  The dye begins to react with the fabric immediately this way.  You can soak the fabric in soda ash solution and let it air dry to work with dyes on dry cloth.  (Dyes can also be mixed with sodium alginate to thicken them for silk screen, brush painting, stamping, and other application techniques.)

From there...  You can get other variations by mixing different colors of dye concentrates together before adding them to the cloth or by dribbling a bit of this color and a bit of that color right on to the cloth. I mainly use primary colors and mix to get secondary colors and other shades.  Again, it makes a difference at what point the soda ash solution is added.  Another variable is how much the fabric is manipulated once the dye and soda ash solution are together.  Little or no manipulation allows some dye resistance to occur and more color separation.  A lot of manipulation yields more uniform color.

So.  What I did with the batch pictured above...  I wetted the cloth in plain water, squeezed out excess water, and did sort of a swirling motion as I scrunched the cloth.  If you look closely at the cloths pictured at the top you can see a bit of spiraling where the dye resisted.  For each color, the three cloth samples were scrunched very tightly together.  The three pieces of cloth were approximately 5 inches square and they were crammed together into the bottom of a 6 oz yogurt cup.  So that was tight.  Packing the cloth this tightly creates a fair amount of resist without binding with rubber bands or string.  I love the surface variations created in this way.  I mixed my dye concentrates in small cups and poured them into small squeeze bottles.  Then I made blends of different colors of liquid dye concentrates in small cups and applied the dye to the cloth with eyedroppers.  Most of these samples have a few drops of black dye added to deepen the colors.  About 10 or 15 minutes after the dye was put on the fabric I poured soda ash solution on top and manipulated the cloth and solution with my (gloved) fingers.  I was wanting some uniformity in color but also a little resist.

Above is an example from another dye batch.  This time I dribbled different colors right onto the cloth without mixing them together.  The fabric was not scrunched as tightly as it was in the top examples and it was manipulated a little bit after the soda ash solution was added.  I can't remember exactly what colors were used above.  It looks like some navy and fuchsia at least.

These are dyed like the ones just above with the colors mixing on the wet fabric before the soda ash solution was added.  I think the one on the left is golden yellow with a tiny bit of black and the one on the right is golden yellow and turquoise.  It is hard to predict exactly what is going to happen, which adds to the endless fascination.  With less manipulation the sample on the right might have been more golden yellow and turquoise.  With more manipulation it might have been a more uniform green.  

These samples are haboti silk and silk organza.  I'm intrigued by what could be done with layering the dyed organza.  Just the casual overlapping above is interesting.  Note to self--for the organza, a quick dip is probably all that is needed.  

I mainly have used Procion MX dyes on cotton, but I have dyed silk as well.  The soda ash can be hard on silk so I usually dilute the solution a bit and only wait the minimum amount of time before I rinse and wash the silk.  I add vinegar to the final rinse for silk.

Any questions?

I have no idea what I'll do with these...