thickened dye freshly applied to flour paste resist

One more post before I hit the road for Costa Rica at o’ dark thirty in the morning.

I dyed one last batch of fabrics (8 pieces) using flour paste resist. I did textured rayon, raw silk, pimatex cotton, crepe de chine silk, and a textured linen/silk doubleweave that I love. The flour is such a mess and such a lot of work to wash out but it’s worth it. There’s nothing else that is so simple and yet gives such great organic results.

scraping away the flour with a putty knife

I’ll be back early in January to post some vacation photos and continue documenting my work. Cheers to 2013!

washed, dried and ironed

greens

I’m coming to the end of two weeks of intensive dyeing. It’s been deeply pleasurable to dye each day. It’s so much fun to change white fabric into multi-colored and textured pieces of cloth.

Because I’m working in a really specific colorway and I’ve already designed the patterns, these two weeks have been very focused. But even though I was working within narrow parameters I still found a lot of freedom in the work. Some of the sense of freedom is because I’ve been trying new techniques. It’s always exciting to try something new and even better when it is successful. I also used some of my tried and true techniques like breakdown printing and flour paste resist. They still feel new and exciting to me after all these years. Perhaps it’s because there’s a sense of mystery in these techniques. You don’t know what you have until the print is revealed or the flour paste is scraped away.

The palette that I’m working with is based on the colors of the Madrone trees: light green, golden yellow, terra cotta, reds, and dark brown. Surface design techniques I’ve used include direct painting, breakdown and other printing, and flour paste resist. I still need to overdye or paint many of the fabrics to quiet down the white, but I feel very good about where I am now. That’s good because I’m heading off to Costa Rica tomorrow morning!

Following are some photos of the fabrics organized by color.

yellows

reds and browns

breakdown screens drying in front of the heater

Today I printed some of the breakdown screens I set up yesterday. I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped because my intern, Mia, was out sick. It’s amazing how much faster the process goes when you have another set of hands to help out. I did make some progress, though. It’s in the washer now as I post this. More tomorrow . . .

yesterday's dyeing all washed and ironed

printing a breakdown screen

a detail of the wet print

I’ve been having a really productive and fun time in the studio. My new technique of producing positive and negative imagery using the “draw through” printing technique not only produces interesting marks but is also easy and fast. I have to hold myself back because I could easily use up every bit of white fabric in the studio.

Here are some photos of the positive and negative prints I made.

silk scarves

Paper patterns for the new series are done (well, except for a few tweaks here and there) and now it’s time for the fun part: color and fabric!

I had a little trouble getting started. Which colors? Which fabrics? What surface design techniques? And how can I apply what I learned on my mini-retreat and book?

I started by making some silk scarves as gifts. Much less threatening and very useful this time of year. I sewed some chiffon scarves into tubes and then compressed them on to wine bottles before applying dye. Boy were they underwhelming. They just didn’t turn out at all. Luckily, I had also made some silk charmeuse scarves which I folded and clamped using large metal washers. They turned out really cool (see above).

That got me warmed up and yesterday I set up some breakdown screens using cheesecloth, string, fabric, and a table runner. They weren’t dry yet today (I didn’t really expect them to be–it is December). So I added fixative to the rest of the thickened dye I mixed yesterday and did some printing.

break down screens

One of the techniques I used in my retreat was “draw throughs”. It’s a printing technique where you ink up a plate, put paper onto it and then draw on the back of the paper to transfer a design. On my retreat I used it to draw through onto the paper and then also printed the ink left on the plexiglass to get both a positive and negative of the image.

I didn’t actually think it would work with thickened dye. The alginate thickener is so gloppy and slippery and fabric is so absorbent that I didn’t anticipate it would be effective. But I couldn’t know unless I tried it.

I began by using a brayer to spread the thickened dye on a sheet of plexiglass. It didn’t work at all. The brayer just slipped around on top of the dye. I so used a spreader (from the hardware store–I think it’s used to spread grout). It was pretty streaky but since I like an organic look and I’m working with bark imagery, I didn’t mind at all. I laid a piece of fabric on top of the plexi and used a pencil eraser to “draw” on the back of the fabric.

When I pulled off the fabric it looked pretty cool. Then I took a print from what was left on the plexiglass. It also looked pretty cool. I played with that for a while and also used some cheesecloth to make designs.

I was having a blast and I worked back and forth for a while until I realized that, although it was really fun and I liked the effects, I wasn’t actually producing any fabric that was big enough to be usable for my pieces.

Now what? I don’t have a bigger piece of plexiglass. I looked around the studio. Lid from big plastic bin? No, there’s writing imprinted in it. A silk screen? What a mess that would be. Just the table? Mess also. How about the cutting mats I use when I cut with the rotary cutters? Not the front, dye might get into the cracks and then transfer when I was cutting fabric, but what about using the back?

I’m happy to say it worked. The mat adds a texture but the dye actually spreads out pretty nicely. And it was easy to clean when I was done because it’s flexible.

I just got everything out of the washer and threw it in the dryer. What shall I try tomorrow?

positive and negative imagery

Today I put up the paper patterns for 18 new pieces for the Easelstan studio-mates to take a look at. Pam very kindly let me borrow the big wall in her studio so that we could look at them all together. Not all of the patterns are finalized, I have some minor work to do on five or so of them, but the bulk of the work at this stage is done.

Whew! It’s amazing what a sense of relief I feel.

I also feel a huge sense of accomplishment in getting this far. Even though all we were looking at was white paper, these are the underlying compositions and structures of the finished pieces. They are the bones, the skeleton, of the art that will be. And good bones determine everything.

I feel more confident in the scope of the show and in my process of creating now. I feel energized to move forward.

Now to finish up those last few patterns and on to the dyeing.

a triptych

patterns on the cutting board

I’ve been getting a lot done at the studio. Patterns for all eighteen panels for my show are roughed out and I’ve finalized twelve of them. The studio is filling up. Progress is being made.

And the studio is driving me crazy!

There are little bits of paper and tape everywhere. Not just all over the floor and table but stuck to my clothes. I found one in my bed last night! I’m running out of space to put all this work and it’s making me claustrophobic. I’m going to have to figure out some storage options soon so that I can find room to work.

panels painted and ready to go

I was hoping to have all the panels finalized by tomorrow because I’m “presenting” to my studio critique group. I always knew it was an optimistic goal but I’m not actually that far off. Plenty to show, plenty to talk about. It will be good to put it all up and stand back a bit to get it in perspective.

And next week: Color!

check marks!

frames for the pattern pieces