I was browsing the internet as you do - me I’m always googling words for inspiration, both text and images - and came across this “what if” blog. That really made me smile because if one thing stuck in my mind from my Self Expressions class with Myrna at QU it was to keep asking yourself what if? And here is a whole blog devoted to what iffing. Stop by Jude’s Spirit Cloth blog too, because it’s worth the visit.

I shared my find in the yahoo group that was set up to keep our Self Expressions class together and learnt from Linda that Myrna now has her own blog too. That lady is amazing, I don’t know where she finds the energy to do all that she does. But we can be happy that she does and shares her discoveries with us.

Whilst browsing Myrna’s blog I saw a link to Marjie’s blog. She was my dyeing teacher at QU and it’s thanks to her great teaching - lots of fun and lots of real practical help - that I got so involved in dyeing. My quilting and dyeing has taken over most of the cellar in our house - 3 rooms and the stairwell - ok one room gets to have the washing machine and the wine rack in it too but the rest is mine!

Just shows how the whole world is rapidly becoming interconnected by the internet.

I finished the last exercise in Module 2 of the C&G course this weekend. It was further exploring transparency with transfer printing. I ordered the transfer dyes right at the start of the module. I only managed to get the polycotton fabric after Christmas. It had to have a minimum of 65% polyester content and that was surprisingly hard to find. It just really shows what a fabric desert Frankfurt is. There are very few shops left that stock a wide range of fabrics.

Transfer printing is remarkably easy to do. You just paint the dye onto paper. Wait for it to dry. And then iron it onto your fabric. You could get into painting complex designs onto the paper and then just ironing them onto the fabric. The activity in the course called for cutting out shapes from the paper and producing the design as you go along by ironing the shapes onto the fabric one by one.

Here is the piece of fabric I ended up with:

I only ordered the three primary colours of the transfer dye although you can get many more colours. I wanted to see the effect of ironing one colour over another. You do get the secondary colours where they overlap. You can also increase the saturation of the hue by ironing one shape over another in the same colour. This was particularly effective with the yellow, which was not so keen to leave the paper and attach itself to the cloth.

Other things to try in the future would be mixing the dyes before painting them onto the paper. You should be able to produce all the colours on the colour wheel. Definitely worth doing some more experimenting. You can get some nice controlled effects this way. Pity it doesn’t work with 100% cotton. I can’t do transfer printing onto my hand dyed fabrics.

Well as promised here are some of the results of my printing at the weekend. First 2 pages from my sketchbook with acrylic paint printing. These are the results after I worked out the correct amount of paint to use.

And then the results with dye paste printed on fabric. The leaves were real ones from the garden placed on the fabric and printed over.

You get some interesting effects with the blue dye moving through the fabric faster than the yellow in the green. The reverse was sometimes more pleasing on the eye than the “right” side.

And finally I printed over some previously dyed mustard yellow fabric. The design was inspired by the wallpaper in our lounge and japanese calligraphy. It got more like the calligraphy as I went along

I’ve started the second module of my C&G course now. Last weekend I was taking pictures of lines. It’s amazing how many lines there are around about when you start looking for them. I took all my photos in the house and in the garden. No need to go further afield.

This weekend I’ve been monoprinting. I started off with acrylic paint in my new sketchbook and then moved on to printing on cloth. I must admit I couldn’t believe that it would work with thickened dye on fabric soaked in washing soda solution and then dried. I didn’t think that there would be enough moisture and chemicals to get a reaction going with the dye. Even though I’ve read about it in Ann Johnston’s books and in the course notes. As it was an activity for the course I was obliged to try it out. And surprise, surprise it worked

Here are some photos of the printing on fabric. First of all you roller thickened dye paste onto a sheet of acetate and then you make marks:

Then you flip the acetate sheet onto the fabric and give it a going over with another clean roller to press the dye into the fabric. If you have too much dye on the acetate sheet at this point you end up splodging your marks. Ask how i know P.S. I was winning at Tic Tac Toe (or Noughts and Crosses).

Repeat as many times as you have dye paste and prepared fabric.

The results are in various stages of finishing - the bucket process etc. Watch this space for photos of the results. My scepticism has been proven wrong.

P.P.S. Note the vintage ICI lab coat - from my industrial year 1976-1977 - a well travelled fashion item.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front. Last weekend I exhausted myself with a marathon dyeing session. The reason for the dyeing was two activities for my C&G course. I had to dye a 6 section colour wheel. You were allowed to skip the activity if you had taken Level 2, where there must be a similar exercise or they encouraged those who had dyed one before to try a 12 section colour wheel. Well I’ve not done Level 2, but I have dyed a colour wheel before, so I thought it had better be a 12 section wheel. (I was going add a link here to a previous post but the first colour wheel seems to be pre-blog.) It was also a 12 section one, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. The oranges all looked the same, as did the purples. At the time I had only just started dyeing and didn’t have all the supplies/suppliers sussed. This time I have more experience and have worked out the best supplies. It turned out much better. Nice to be able to see that I have made progress.

Lying on each piece of fabric is a skein of crochet cotton that I dyed in with the fabric. I was quite sceptical as to whether it would work as it was obviously bleached as well as mercerised and “gasiert” (whatever that means - I’ve been unable to find out despite google). I washed it first in synthrapol. Whether that was necessary or not I don’t know, but the results were way beyond my expectations.

I also had to dye a larger piece of fabric using a pair of complementary colours in the dye bath. This was a repeat of an activity done previously with watercolour paints, to see that mixing complementary colours gave browns or greys. Well my watercolour attempts were pretty unsuccessful. The paints didn’t want to mix much at all. I was quite surprised as my niece had told me she didn’t get on with painting in watercolours, because everything ended up muddy. Well not for me - even when it was supposed too. My dyeing turned out much better. I tried two combinations - yellow/purple and red/green. The results of the yellow/purple were particularly pleasing.

For those who are interested, I was using Jacquard dyes: Fire Engine Red, Medium Blue and Lemon Yellow. The fabric was the cheapo 100% cotton from IKEA. It is not particularly a fine weave but it is perfectly ok for the stuff I’m doing and it’s an unbeatable price of 2€ a meter and 150cm wide.

I was signed up for a second shibori class at QU, which was scheduled to start this coming weekend. Unfortunately it got cancelled. So I treated myself to a book on the subject instead. It arrived on Monday.

I was only able to really start looking at it in any detail last night, as up to now we have been completely occupied with our renovations. But they are over now, so watch this space, things should start happening again. We have a large space of wall left empty for a new quilt, so I have a new project to get going on.

Back to the book - it’s by Janice Gunner and from what I’ve seen so far it will be a great addition to my few dyeing books. She really explains the techniques well and there are lots of examples of fabric produced using the various methods to whet your appetite. So although my class fell through I think I may well be doing a bit of dyeing anyway.

This week there has been more progress on my blue and green quilt. I have sewn all the blocks together to make the quilt top. And I have also dyed some fabric for the backing. I tried out one of the methods in the book “Color by Accident” by Ann Johnston. It is a combination of blue dye followed 15 minutes later with yellow dye. Before adding the yellow dye I rearranged the fabric in the bucket so that it was scrunched in a different place. I like the effect. I had run out of lemon yellow dye and had to use my golden yellow, so the green turned out more olive than I would have liked. But in fact it goes well with the greens on the quilt top - one of those fortunate happenstances.

My original sketch had figures on the quilt top. Once I had sewn all the blocks together I began to have doubts about it. I was worried that the log cabins would get lost behind the figures. After looking at the quilt top on the design wall for a few days I returned to my original plan. The quilt just wasn’t finished. I thought maybe I could make the figures from transparant fabric. I sketched my figures on paper and cut them out and pinned them to the quilt top on the design wall.

I realised then that they weren’t going to hide so much of the log cabin blocks and decided to cut them from cotton fabric. They are now fused to the quilt top and the quilt sandwich is pinned ready to sew around the edges of the figures and do the remaining quilting.

About 2 weeks I took delivery of three books by Ann Johnston, two about dyeing and one about quilt design. I have already browsed extensively through the two dyeing books and am sure that I shall have lots of fun trying out the things suggested in them. I like the fact that the books are spirally bound. It will make them very practical to use as a reference when dyeing. Ann’s method for dyeing is slightly different to the one I’ve been using so far, that I learnt at QU from Marjie McWilliams. Having done those courses with someone to hold my hand via the ether I have the confidence now to branch out on my own. Ann Johnston’s books are very easy to follow, well laid out and with a large number of experiments and variations to try out.
The first book is about low immersion dyeing and gives recipes for mixing colours, for dyeing gradations, for dyeing gradations with more than one colour.

The second book covers lots of other techniques for getting dye onto fabric, including painting, stamping, tying and much more. The nice thing is that it is all done with stuff, which it is easy to collect together and isn’t going to put too much of a strain on the budget.

The third book covers general design principles like line, colour, value, texture. All the examples are quilts that Ann has made herself or with some help. The fabrics have all been dyed and printed by Ann. So taken together you can see how the cloth you might make using the techniques in the first two books can be turned into fabulous art quilts - if you are Ann Johnston

The final plus point for me, about this third book, is that the quilts shown are all of the type of design that appeals to me and that I would like to make. So the book is a great source of inspiration too.
Definitely money well spent.

We went to IKEA this morning to buy a cushion inside to put in my Ulu Fruit block that is destined to become a cushion cover. (BTW the quilting is all finished now and the block is washed to remove the chalk marks.)

And this is what we returned with:

• 2 bolts of unbleached muslin (unbeatable pricing)
• 6 measuring jugs as dyeing containers
• various black and white printed fabrics
• dark blue, red and greeny yellow transparent fabric
• glass beads for using in shibori dyeing
• and 2 packets of fabric petals

I thought everything would have its use for either quilting or dyeing. So quite a good time was had by all - well me anyway.

We did buy the cushion inner and a couple of other household items but they didn’t merit a picture on my blog