Hand dyed fabric beads

Hand dyed fabric beads!  I had such a good time making these beads.  I hand dyed some cotton in this beautiful coppery red shade, painted to seal the edges and decorate a bit.  Then I strung them on a really long piece of yarn with the wooden beads and little glass circle beads that didn't show up well in the photo.  I love making fabric and paper beads.  It's so satisfying.  It's rather amazing too because you are making something, often something grand, from pretty much nothing - scraps of paper and or cloth.  It is a long piece to wrap around several times, but I may take it apart and put the strands on a multi strand clasp.  I think it will look more striking that way.  See the little flag of hand dyed green silk at left?  I'm planning to add more of those once I resolve the stringing matter.  Thanks for reading my blog!

Screen Prints

I spent the day Thursday in my dear and very talented friend Gale's studio where we did screen printing with thickened Procion dye on cotton fabrics. Gale's friend Eve was there to help us. We had a blast. This is really fun stuff! My results are at left.

The process. We first cut stencils ( positive and negatives) of ordinary copy or printer paper. These were used under the screen to create an image on the fabric. The first pass with thickened dye adheres the paper to the screen so it can be used for many iterations of the same image. You don't even need to clean the screens in between prints because the small amount of leftover dye just makes the next print more interesting. It is easy to make multiple prints on the same fabric without making a giant mess as you might in traditional screen printing. I guess fabric and thickened dye are more forgiving than paper and ink!

The hardest part for me, as usual, was waiting the full 24 hour curing period before unwrapping and washing out my pieces! I did it, patience prevailed. This is probably because my last foray into printing with thickened dyes came out rather pale because I did not wait long enough before rinsing. Lesson learned.

The results. I am very pleased with most of my results. I think the top left 2 prints are the most successful both for color and for the shapes created. Working on white fabric was interesting because I wasn't sure I would like the results. I do. The white might not remain in the finished pieces, I may fill in with paint, or perhaps overdye some, but I won't know til I get there!

Lessons learned. Some colors needed more dye powder in the print paste than others. In future I would double up on the powder for yellow and turquoise, and use even more than that for black. Having had the experience of the medium sized screens, I now know I would like to have one really large screen, huge in fact. It would give interesting results I'm sure. Next time I would have more predyed fabrics ready and perhaps think through a specific color scheme for the day. That way I could wind up with a quilt from the coordinated lot, instead of disparate pieces.

So, what do you think? Are you inspired to try it? Have any questions?

Newest Batch of Hand Dyed Fabrics

Here's my latest batch from the dye pot to my Etsy store! I'm really happy with these. The red violet was not to my liking UNTIL it was washed and ironed - it came out of the dye pot looking like a dark muddy glob, but now the color is beautiful and there is lots of texture. Oh, the magic of rinsing!

I'm just so in love with dying my own fabrics. The hardest thing is the waiting time. It turns out that I have far less patience than I imagined! I prefer to let them cure for 24 hours, but that's a long, long wait!

Thanks for reading and looking at my fabrics. As always, I appreciate your feedback.

A project for me

A friend of ours gave me a bag of 18 beautiful batik fat quarters and said: make me something. That's it, no idea what kind of piece she wants - wearable, wall, bed, home accessory???? She wants me to get back to her with some ideas before I get started. I've had the fabrics for over a month now. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed by this assignment.

I don't feel this collection of fabrics suits the way I've been working lately, with large free pieced blocks in a limited palette, so I don't want this to be the next piece in my series. I've been looking for design ideas in my travels through the web, and found a few quilts that would suit this scrappy collection of batiks. I have the crazy nine patch, disappearing nine patch, drunkard path with B&W quarter circles, and some free pieced examples to show her. Hopefully she'll love one of these ideas.

Today I took photos of the fabrics and played with them in PhotoShop. This helped show me how all the colors will work together, and that there were more light and dark values than I thought. Most seemed medium to me, as is so often the case. Above are the exercises I did.

Do you have any suggestions for me? What would you do with this group of fabrics?

A Few More Hand Dyes

Until now I have been mixing my dyes from powders every time I dye, and mixing very small quantities so there is no leftover dye solution to waste. This week that practice ended because I bought a mini fridge for the studio. I'm so happy with it! Found it on Craig's list, right in my neighborhood, for $35. It's great! It is light weight, so I was able to move it in by myself. For a mini fridge it's pretty roomy with two shelves and a basket in the bottom and storage on the door too. Oh, and a freezer compartment. :) It just barely fit in the studio, though. I have so much stuff in there!

I have mixed up dye concentrates for most of my colors. Above are the first few pieces "post fridge". There will surely be a little learning curve for this as the measurements are all different. Getting the right depth of shade will definitely take some work. Also, no more going without gloves since the squeeze bottles of dye concentrate drip a little bit at the tip. Because of these drips, I will use fabric as a drop cloth instead of newspaper. I know I'll get some beautiful "drip cloths" this way.

There's room in the fridge for plenty of print paste and a gelatin plate or two! Great fun to come!

More Hand Dyed Fabrics

1. Violet and gold, 2. Blue Sky Crackle 2, 3. Blue sky swirl, 4. Blue Sky crackle 1

I dyed some more fabric above. I'm really happy with it, especially the violet and gold piece. I still got some little red speckles from the fuchsia in spite of my dilligence in stirring it, but not too bad this time. I did not fileter it, but apparently should have. I am going to switch to a different red dye and see if I like the results. Light red (Dharma ) doesn't have quite the bad rep as fuchsia does. The color isn't quite a cool, but we'll see how it works out.

These fabrics are for sale on my Etsy shop www.quiltrobin.etsy.com .

Newest Hand Dyed Fabrics

1. pink lemonade sorbet-2, 2. scarlet sorbet-1, 3. scarlet sorbet-2, 4. green green-1, 5. green pink, 6. pink lemonade sorbet-1, 7. green green-2






Here's the latest batch of my hand dyed fabrics. Links in the legend will take you to larger copies of the photos on Flickr. I'm pretty happy with the results. So many times I feel they need a second trip through the dye pot, but today's work is fine the first time around. I love the green and fuchsia one bottom left. It's such an interesting combination. All of these are for sale in my Etsy shop http://quiltrobin.etsy.com. Your suggestions and feedback always welcome! Thanks for reading my blog!