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

Crayons on Fabric

I am thinking of trying some new techniques with fabric. Trying out some different painting and mark making on fabric and papers for some art quilts. Before I run headlong into it though, I wanted to test some of the products.

 I can only test what I have at home and I am not buying anymore unless I find I really love them or use them a lot.

The picture above shows the crayons that I have. Caran D'Ache Neocolor 2, which are water soluble crayons, Crayola Fabric crayons, Faber-Castell crayons and Shiva Paintstiks.

I have used the Shiva Paintstiks very successfully on quilts before and 10 years later they still look just as good as when I first used them. But I put them into the test anyway. The only drawback to Shiva Paintstiks is that they are oil paint in a stick form and if you get any on the floor or clothes it is there forever. They form a skin on the top and you have to cut the skin away to use them again and that's where little bits of paint can end up in the most unexpected places.

Here is my fabric with the crayons drawn on.

Crayons before washing

1. The top two red marks are the Shiva Paintstiks.

2. Underneath that I brushed the Neocolor 2 with water.

3. Then I brushed Neocolor 2 with textile medium.

4. Then Neocolor 2 ironed.

5. The Crayola Fabric crayons are recommended for synthetic fabrics but I thought they would be ok on cotton too.

6. The Faber-Castell crayons are ordinary craft crayons.

The last two (5 and 6) I painted textile medium on the bottom half to see if it made a difference.

I dunked them in cold water and gave a little rub as well. Then I dried and ironed them.

Crayons after washing.

1. The Paintstiks were hardly changed which was pretty good because you are supposed to heat set them with an iron first and I forgot to do that.

2. The Neocolor 2 with water was fine but a little duller and lost a bit of colour.

3. The Neocolor 2 with textile medium didn't lose any colour and was quite vibrant.

4. The Neocolor 2 that was just ironed, washed out a lot. They are water soluble crayons so I guess they are not supposed to be used without water or textile medium.

5. The Crayola Fabric Crayons were much more vibrant with the textile medium applied.

6. The Faber-Castell crayons that are not even fabric crayons were still ok when I used textile medium with them.

I thought that was the end of my testing, but I happened to see a post on Facebook where someone was recommending crayons on Fabric and said that they are fine on fabric if you heat set them with an iron.
I hadn't tried heat setting with an iron so I quickly did another little test.

Heat set Crayons

Heat set Crayons after washing.

The Crayola Fabric Crayons fared the best. But once again the Neocolor 2 are water-soluble and so are not supposed to be used without water or textile medium.

I am not sure how much I will use crayons on fabric but at least I know how to use them the most effectively now.

A few years ago, I did a test using Inktense pencils on Fabric and I found that they worked the best with textile medium. By the way, that Inktense post from 2012 is my most read post ever.

Bye for now,
Linda

Fabric Paint for Mono Printing

In my last post I wrote about printing with a gelatin plate on paper. After a while I thought I would change to printing on fabric because it is fabric that I enjoy working with the most.

I got out all the fabric paints that I had on hand.

Fabric Paints

I had done a lot of prints on paper but I knew that it was more difficult on fabric. I also knew that paint sits on the top of fabric and can make the fabric stiff, something I didn't want especially when it comes to quilting.

I decided to do some testing and kept everything the same. The same white fabric and the same stencil shapes. I did a lot of printing that day. Here they are drying

I used the paints straight out of the bottle, some were a very thin consistency and so they might have performed better if they had been thickened. Those tests will have to wait for another day.

I was looking for paint that kept the fabric soft and printed clearly. Here's how they worked out it order.

1. Texcraft Dual Purpose

Texcraft Dual Purpose- soft hand and clear print

2. Setacolor Transparent

Pebeo Setacolor transparent- Soft hand and clear print

3. Sun Dyes

Sun Dyes- Very thin and runny but worked well with a soft hand and clear print

4. Gems

Texcraft Gems- medium hand a fuzzy print

5. Speedball

Speedball fabric paint- Fuzzy print and oil smell

6. Derivan Screen Ink

Derivan Screen Ink- Bubbly well rolling out and a lot of paint went through the fabric, fuzzy image

7.Tulip Fabric Paint

Tulip Fabric Paint, very runny, came through fabric, fuzzy print- rough feel

8. Derivan Fabric Paint

Derivan Fabric Paint- Came through the fabric, fuzzy image

9. Tsukineko Ink

Tsukineko Ink- very runny and thin, came through fabric

10. Setacolor Opaque

Setacolor opaque- Very pale print

To be fair some of these paints and inks were not meant for mono printing on a gelatin plate, but I wanted to find out what worked best for me so I didn't spend time or money in the future buying paints that didn't suit me.



When I found what I liked best I started to do some more prints, combining colours and using different stencils.

I still have a long way to go with this technique and not sure yet if it's something I will keep using. So time will tell. I really love making these prints though, it's very addictive.

Bye for now,
Linda

Frixion Pen Testing

Frixion pens have been available for a few years now and many quilters love them as a marking tool. I did some testing back in 2013 and found that I couldn't remove the marks completely and so I have always resisted using them.

I thought that it was time that I retested them just to make sure. They are available at newsagents and supermarkets everywhere and marketed as an erasable pen. You just need to iron away the pen lines.

Frixion pens

I drew a heart on some fabric in red and black.

Frixion pen drawing

The marks ironed away easily, it seems too good to be true.

The drawing erased when ironed

 I remember a warning when they first became popular that said that the marks reappear when they get cold, so I put the ironed away fabric in the freezer for a few hours and sure enough the hearts reappeared.
I re-ironed the hearts away with steam and put them in the freezer again and the marks re-appeared again.

2nd freezer test

The next time I tried putting the fabric in the fridge and the hearts did not come back and I wondered if the pen lines had gone at last so I put them in the freezer again and once again those marks came back,

3rd freezer  test

I didn't try to remove the marks anymore after three attempts they always came back when exposed to extreme cold.

Then I remembered that a favourite marking tool of mine is the white Clover iron away marking pen. I wondered if those marks came back in the freezer.

Clover iron away marking pen

I drew a heart on the dark fabric with the Clover marking pen.

Heart drawn with Clover marking pen

I let the mark sit for a few hours to set and then I ironed it away and placed it in the freezer.

Ironed then placed in freezer

The heart drawn with the Clover marking pen did not re appear.

I suppose the difference with the two pens is that the Clover pen was developed for using on fabric but the Frixion pen was not made for fabric use.

It's a disappointing result with the Frixion pens because they give such a fine, clear mark to use as a quilting line.

Now I know that I never put my quilts in the freezer but I do send my quilts away in planes where they get very cold in the luggage storage and I would hate for my quilt to arrive for a competition or exhibition and find out that those marks have re appeared.
Saying that, several well-known quilters have used the pens and posted them overseas and not had a problem. The trouble is that those marks are still there in the quilt, they have not gone. It makes me wary of using them.

Just after I had finished my testing I saw an article done by Jenny K Lyon, who had done her own testing and then went a step further and contacted the makers of Frixion Pens who told her that the pens were not developed to be used on fabric. Click here to see the article.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Frixion pen people developed a pen that could be used on fabric?

Bye for now,
Linda

Lace Dyeing

This week I've been doing a bit of lace dyeing. I only needed to dye one lace motif for a new crazy block that I've started, but one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was testing all the colours that I had. A simple task became a major event!

I have two brands of lace dye/paint that I use. The one I tend to use the most is Ozecraft Dye. The people that sell this brand always have a stand at the major quilt shows around Australia. I think that there are 33 colours in the range and I have 15 of them. The colours are nice and soft straight from the bottle but to be colourfast you have to dry them with a hairdryer or microwave.
I found out the hard way that they are not colourfast if you air dry them and then heat set with an iron.

Ozecraft Dyes

The other brand I have is from Sara's Bloom, I bought this set of dyes when I was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 2010. This is a set of 7 colours and you can mix them together to make a huge variety of other colours. This was the main reason that I hadn't used them much because I wasn't sure what colours I could make.
On the spur of the moment I decided to use the colours and mix them together and make a colour chart. They make some beautiful colours and the advantage to these dyes are that they are colourfast and permanent without any heat setting.

Sara's Bloom Dyes

Here is the colour chart I made with the Ozecraft dyes.

Ozecraft Colours

Here is the chart I made with mixing the Sara's Bloom Dyes.

Sara's Bloom Colours

Having these charts is going to make it so much easier when I have to dye lace in the future.

When I dye a lace motif and I am trying to be particular where I place the colours, I pin the motif to a piece of styrofoam.

That was the end of my dye painting for now but I am much better prepared for next time.

Bye for now,
Linda