Ugly duckling 3

This time the duckling is a deconstructed screen print which had too much white on it.

I soda soaked it and accordeon folded it like this:

Placed it in a glass jar, added ice cubes on it and seafoam procion dye powder.

After this dye bath it looked like this. Much work was still needed.

Of course you can buy stamps, but I love working with unusual stamps. For this piece of fabric I stamped with bubble wrap and punchinella. For the bubble wrap I used teal Golden Acrylic and for the punchinella Pebeo Setacolor transparent fuchsia. 

The colors used in the deconstructed screen printing were red and blue so using similar colors would keep the whole design together.

After the two stamping session this fabric still needed more so I decided to give it another dye bath. I forgot to write down the exact colors I used, but they were different yellows, one was straw and the other might have been golden yellow or sun yellow.

This fabric was a difficult one, but I am satisfied with the result I got. Here is a picture of a detail:

Ugly duckling 2

Here is the second ugly duckling. I don't remember anymore how I dyed this piece of fabric, but it did not turn out great:

First step to improve it, is to over dye it. I soda soaked it, crunched it and placed it in this glass jar. It is the middle piece. Added ice cubes and a couple of teaspoons of rosebud procion dye powder.

The next day it looked like this:

Much improved, but I wanted to do more to it. My stamp this time was a slice of loofah and as paint I used burgundy Lumiere textile paint.

And a second layer using a bigger slice of loofah and gold nugget metallic Bella paint.

With this as result. Isn't it gorgeous?

Ugly duckling 1

When you dye your own fabric - even as an experienced dyer - you will not always love the fabric you created. Some pieces of fabric start their life as ugly ducklings, but with some help you can turn them into pretty swans. They just need some more attention :-). In the coming 3 blog posts I am going to show you what I did with some of them.
Here is a picture of how the fabric started out, a clamped shibori:

I accordeon folded it - sorry but I forgot to take a picture of this - and placed it on top of 2 other pieces of fabric in this glass jar. Added some ice cubes and burnt orange procion dye powder.

The color of the fabric improved, but it needed more. I used a piece of corrugated cardboard as a stamp. The piece of tape on the back made it easier to lift and reposition it. As paint I used Pebeo Setacolor transparent fuchsia and raw sienna.

After the stamping the fabric looked like this:

Much improved, don't you think? In two days I will show you another transformation.