Eco Dyeing at Tarndie

 Last weekend, I was down at Geelong for the Art Quilt Australia Awards, my last post was all about my excitement of winning First Prize.

The following day some of us drove down to Tarndwarncoort Sheep Farm or Tarndie for short, for a day of Eco Dyeing.

It is one of the oldest sheep farms and properties in Australia and was built in 1848 and now classified as a National Trust property. The same family still owns the property as it has been handed down through the generations.

As it was a sheep farm, we were dyeing using wool fabrics, they were quite thick upholstery fabric that they got in for us to use as they specialise in dyeing yarns.

First we dyed some fabric using Cherry Ballart or wild Cherry with some copper which gives a lovely Chartreuse colour and then we learnt about Indigo dyeing.

These are the fabrics that I did. I have ironed the fabrics but couldn't get the wrinkles out, so I won't be using upholstery fabric if I ever do it again.

 The Indigo vat seems like a lot of work, so I was glad to see it done but probably won't add it to my bag of tricks.

Our last technique was eco dyeing with leaves. I have done it before with iron water, so I took the opportunity to use copper instead to get an orange colour.

Here I am arranging my leaves onto the fabric.

This is a photo of all our fabrics on copper pipes after being steamed.

 Here is the big reveal when we unrolled them and took off the leaves.

We had a lovely lunch in the dining room of the old house.

We also had a walk around the farm even though it was a bit of a wet, cold day. They keep Polwarth sheep which have the brown faces. The sheep in the photo below had twins and you can see a white lamb with them. The white lamb kept following the other mother with the twins, probably wanted some playmates.

Polwarth Sheep

Despite the cold weather, it was an enjoyable day and lovely to get to know the other women who mostly came from interstate.

Bye for now,

Linda

Sun printing

 We had a couple of days of sunny weather last week. It is the middle of winter and it wasn't warm but I thought I would grab the chance to do some sun-printing to prepare for an upcoming project I have in mind.

Here are some leaves sitting on some fabric waiting for some magic to happen.

Sun Printing with leaves

I want the fabric for a nature inspired quilt so I didn't want the fabrics to be too bright.

Here is the result of that fabric.

Sun printing result

After I had removed the leaves, I painted over with some yellow paint and then I added some olive green paint to make it more nature inspired rather than bright.

I also painted a fabric and left it in the sun with loose folds, once again I painted it twice for a stronger effect.

Sun printing with folds

I wanted to use up all my left over paint, so I put a stencil on some fabrics.

Sun printing with stencil

That was a very clear print, I think I'll be able to use them as applique in my project.

Some of my sun prints didn't have enough texture on them so I decided to add some flour resist. I hadn't done any flour resist since last year but luckily I could look up my old blog post to remember how I did it.

Here is my post on Flour Resist from last year.

I cracked the first one a bit too much and so the lines got a bit thick.

Sun printing and flour resist

I actually just gently tapped the stiffened flour on the back next to get a finer result.

Flour resist

Next I put some flour resist on plain white fabric, thinking I could paint it later in whatever colour I wanted. I was very gentle with the cracking this time and the lines were very fine.

Very fine flour resist

I think I will be able to use these fabrics in my upcoming quilt, I hope so anyway. I am trying something new this time, inspired by my recent collage work. I want to transfer what I have learned on paper to fabric.

Bye for now,

Linda

Soy Wax Printing

 I signed up for an on-line class about soy wax printing. Soy wax is supposed to be more eco friendly than normal batik wax printing, so I thought I might as well try it as I like to know ways to achieve texture on fabric.

Here I am melting the soy wax flakes in my old electric frypan.

Melting the soy wax flakes

They don't take very long to melt.

I got out some of my hand dyed fabric and drew some wax lines and shapes on the top and then painted over the top of that with some blue Procion dyes.

Printing with the soy wax

Here are the results.

The top fabric shows the before and the bottom fabric shows what it looked like afterwards. Not really much of a result for the work involved.

Then I tried using freezer paper as a resist. I cut some freezer paper circles and fish shapes and ironed the negative shape onto yellow fabric. Painted wax in the shapes and then over painted with green dye.

I wasn't very impressed by those results either. Soy wax is obviously a very loose technique and you are not supposed to get crisp edges.

I think I can get better texture with sun printing and painting with dyes and paints or even the flour resist that I used last year.

I don't imagine that I will do soy wax resist printing again. At least I gave it a go. Apart from the ordinary results, I hated washing out the wax. Here is a photo of some fabric soaking in very warm water in a bucket.

rinsing out the soy wax.

You are supposed to rinse out in very warm water in a bucket to loosen the wax and then you can wash in a hot cycle in a washing machine. I rinsed out in very hot water and scrubbed the fabric with my hands but I found the wax very hard to remove. No matter how much I wash out that bucket with hot water, I cannot get the wax off the inside of the bucket. There is no way I would want to put that soy wax in my washing machine.

I had some left over blue dye so I dyed some white PFD fabric and got a nice light blue with texture!

It was light though, so I cut it up into 3 pieces and over-dyed one in the same blue and the other piece in Turquoise dye.

Here are the results.

Blue dyed fabrics

I was happy with them and must do some more dyeing while we have a bit of warm weather left.

So, I gave soy wax resist printing a go and can cross that off my list of techniques.

Bye for now,

Linda

Playing around with Sun dyeing

I have been playing and around with my Sun-dye paints when the weather is fine. Sun dyes are a thin paint made in Australia that can be used as a paint as well as using it for sun printing.

I painted a piece of fabric with magenta and sprinkled some salt over it and sat it in the sun to dry. It is winter here in Australia so the sun is weaker and you get a softer result than you would in the hot summer sun.

Magenta with salt

I pin the painted fabric to a stretched canvas that still has its plastic on it so it won't blow away if a wind springs up.

This is what it looked like after it had dried and I washed the salt off.

It looks nice but I would find it hard to use like it is, so I painted it again the next day with some Flame red and Wattle yellow. Now I could imagine being able to use it.

The salt resist gives it some texture instead of just being a plain fabric. I can imagine using sections of it for applique.

I was seeing what sort of texture and effects I could get. Next; I tried pleating the fabric and letting it dry. It is more rough folds than pleating actually.

Pleated fabric

This is the result.

I like the effect and could imagine it as a background or in a landscape quilt.

I tried some stencils next, I didn't give the stencils much thought, I just grabbed whatever was on the top of my pile.

Once again, I over painted them.

I could imagine being able to use them. It's amazing how much better they look when you crop just a part of the fabric, it gives it a new life.

Finally, I tried some stamping, I had to wait for the stamp to dry before I painted over it.

This seemed much too graphic for me unless I was doing something very modern. I tried again with a softer contrast.

Yes, probably more suited to my taste. That could easily be cut up for leaves.

I am liking the sun dye paint and will definitely keep using it.

But now a part of me wants to try dyeing fabric again! I said that I wouldn't dye anymore because I hate all that rinsing out afterwards. But I have seen another way of dyeing that is more controlled instead of just bunching it up in a bucket.

I have a couple of projects that I have to finish but once they are done, I'll give this other method of dyeing a try. I'll just use the dyes that I already have and give it a go.

I'll let you know how it works out, but it won't be for at least another month.

Bye for now,
Linda

Flour paste resist

I have been trying lots of surface design ideas while we've been in lock down. I don't know why, I suppose it's a distraction from everything that is going on.

I followed the instructions in a book called Art Cloth by Jane Dunnewold.

I mixed up a paste of equal parts of plain flour and cold water, 3/4 cup of each.

It was the first time I had ever done it, so I got out a piece of hand dyed fabric, some gelli printed fabric and some commercial fabric as well.

You put the cold water into a bowl and gradually add the flour, mixing it up until it resembles a pancake mixture in consistency, not too thick, not too thin. I used equal quantities of flour and water and used it that way.

I pinned down the fabric to hold it in place. I have a homemade printing board that is slightly padded and I also used a painting canvas that still has its plastic cover on it.

I spread over the flour paste, I didn't know if it was too thin or not but in the end it seemed to work.

Pretty scary looking isn't it?

I left it to dry for 24 hours. It's winter here in Australia so it definitely needed 24 hours to dry.

As it dries it shrinks, shrivels up and becomes very stiff. Luckily, I pinned it or it might have turned into a ball of fabric.

When it is completely dry you bunch up the fabric, creating cracks in the flour paste. In the book there was a warning not to overdo the cracking and in the small pieces I did overdo it, probably because a 6" piece of fabric was easy to scrunch.

After you scrunch it and form the cracks, you paint over it. Many people use dye in this step and then you need to use soda ash to fix it and then when it's dry you have to do all that rinsing to remove the excess dye. I didn't want to do that.

I used Sun Dye paint which is an Australian runny acrylic paint, sort of like Dye na Flow paint. It's heat set so you don't need to rinse it out.

I painted with black mostly and some magenta on a couple of fabrics.

The Sun Dye paint likes the sun especially and we only have a really weak sun at the moment so I left it to dry for 24 hours.

The next day I put the fabrics in a bucket of cold water and rubbed the fabrics together to loosen the flour. That bucket of water ends up very gunky. Apparently, you do not want to pour the gunky fabric down the sink, so I poured it onto the garden.

Then I put the fabrics in another bucket of clean, cold water and they rinsed out very quickly.

To completely clean them, I washed them in the washing machine. You always use cold water with this technique so you don't end up with glue!

I was happy with my results. I think I cracked too much though because when I see what the professionals do, their cracks are very fine and spindlier. The magenta ones were a fail, I must have cracked the flour paste too much because they came out solid magenta, as if the paint had run underneath the flour.

The top photo was only a 6" piece of fabric and I decided to see what happened if I added some green paint over the top.

That worked, so I was very happy with my experiment and think it is something I could use in the future, especially as flour is so safe and user friendly without having to use any chemicals.

Blogger has changed a bit and the settings are different to use, hopefully there won't be any issues.

Bye for now,

Linda

Creative Dyeing Downunder

I have been as busy as ever during our Covid 19 lock down. As well as all my normal sewing I have been doing some on-line courses.
One of them is called Creative Dyeing Downunder with Jacinta Leishman. It is conducted via a closed Facebook group which is working well and is easy for people to upload photos. Jacinta is well- known for doing the dyed silk, wool and threads that are available at the online shop called The Thread Studio.

I wasn't really going to start dyeing threads but the course was pretty cheap and it's so rare to have a class with Jacinta.

The course uses Procion dyes for cotton and Acid dyes for silk and wool. I have plenty of Procion dyes but no acid dyes so I went online and ordered some Landscape acid dyes from Kraftcolour. They have everything you need for any surface design and it came quickly too.

Landscape Acid Dyes

They had many different sets available in various colourways and I found them irresistible, so I probably bought much more than I need!

Here is some silk thread wet and ready to be painted with the silk dyes.

In my other online course, I have been taking photos of all the autumn leaves and trees that are around at the moment so I decided to stick with the theme and paint the threads with autumn colours.

I also got out some cheese waste wool that I must have bought when I did a felting course a couple of years ago and painted some of that as well.

Painting silk thread

I only used an 1/8th of a cup of water with a 1/4 tsp of dye but I had too much dye left over so I cut up some pieces of silk fabric and thought I would try dyeing that as well.


The dyes have to be wrapped in plastic and steamed to fix them, so I got out some small freezer bags to hold the fabrics.

Silk fabric preparation

Silk in plastic bags

Everything has to be in plastic because the acid dyes need to be steam set. I didn't want to use any of my saucepans so I went off the Kmart and bought a cheap electric steamer that I'll just use for dyeing.

Silk steamer

The steamer has a third layer as well but I didn't need the third one this time. I set the timer for 1 hour.

I let it cool and then rinsed it all in a colander that I also bought to use. It was amazing that no colour came running out. So different to all the rinsing that has to be done with Procion dyes.
I love acid dyes!

Here is the silk thread and wool dried.

Silk and wool dyed

Here are the silk fabrics that I dyed.

Silk dyed with acid dyes

I was very happy; there were a couple of tiny spots of undiluted dye on the fabric that weren't noticeable on the threads. When I use it for fabrics, I'll have to make sure that all the dye is completely mixed in the warm water.

I still haven't dyed the cotton threads with the Procion dye, I might get to that next week. I have my other courses to work on as well.

Bye for now,
Linda