no loose strings

My first venture into string dyeing was to tie it real tight or clamp it tightly as I did with the little kites shown in the post on Monday.  The next time I ran some tests I tied more loosely and the purple dye really flowed out of the string as in the samples on Wednesday.  I got excited by that! 

So... when the gang got together, we went with the loosely tied approach BUT they used mostly blue yarn.  The pot was boiling blue water so we thought we had lots of winners. The snippets above only faintly marked the silk and cotton scarf.  Maybe the silk was partly to blame?  More experiments, please.

Here's that scarf after washing and ironing.  The maker is happy with it but it is subtle.

Another sampler tried the arashi shibori on a jar technique and she wrapped tightly but look at all that color even before we opened the package.

 She's pretty happy with the marks on the cloth.

The rest of the bundles looked like this before we opened them.

The cloth below was the one in the middle with the red rubber band wrapped fairly tight around a dowel.  She laid strings on the cloth and folded it accordion style from corner to corner.  She used both the blue and the purple strings.

This cloth with the distinct folds was the darkest one in the bundles photo.  The beginning and ending are nice but the middle was only lightly marked.

The last silk and cotton scarf was the long one wrapped into a U shape.  I can't remember how she wrapped this... but those marks look like magic writing.

So I promised to mail out eight samples of the strings that dyed cloth after being boiled for 30 minutes. Over on my personal blog, there are over 30 comments to date and, as of noon Central time on January 30, I going to pick the eight names and contact them via email for their physical addresses. Thank you for following my tutorial and your interest in knowing more. Many commenters have asked for advice on buying yarn that will work so I've ordered some new cotton warp to test what happens with fresh stock. I'll post an update! I'm taking a small risk because I can always weave it up if it doesn't bleed good enough for dyeing.

no strings attached

Still stringing you along.  But today, I give you the complete directions with one photo.

You boil the tied up fabric for 30 minutes in a dye-dedicated pan.  Let it cool and voila! Done.

Here are some examples of how to tie and the results I got.  As usual, your mileage may vary.

 Lengths of the string laid out. Then accordion folded, folded in half lengthwise and tied in three places (the horizontal marks on the left side).  I should be better at this kind of folding since I played the accordion as a child.  You can be as precise as you want in folding - I'm not sure I care about that anymore.

I scrunched this up loosely with my fingers and then tied it with five strings. The purple color flowed nicely out of the string and the tightly bound areas stayed light. 

 Then I got ambitious and did an arashi shibori on a jar that fit easily into my pot.  A wine bottle would have given me more space for a longer piece of cloth but I buy my wine by the box.  :)

There's that pesky poinsettia cloth in the background again; I was trying to give you more than plain white background and I'm probably just confusing you.  The important stuff is just  the jar, the white cloth and the purple string. 

To get an artsy arashi, you start with the corner of a long piece and wrap and scrunch, wrap and scrunch till you run out of cloth or space on the jar. I ran out of space.  You can use a piece of plastic electrician's tape to hold the string and the cloth to make it easier to begin and end the wraping.  That kind of tape holds up well to the boiling and if you need to mark names on things you are dyeing, you can write on it with a Sharpie. 

 The top right corner is where I started, all careful and organized wrapping.  The wrinkles started to happen and I decided to throw careful to the wind and just get on with it.  Turns out I like the part near the hacked off end much better than the beginning.

Come back Friday for more tips and disasters with string dyeing and don't forget to comment on my personal blog for a chance on a bundle of guar-on-teed bleeding string.

stringing you along

Diane here.  I spent a year recently making quilted birthday hotpads for friends and family. Here's one of my best....the free motion quilting follows the lines of dye.

When Beth asked me to be a resident artist, I thought it sounded like a great idea; I started packing my suitcases and checking flight schedules ... and then she mentioned posting photos and writing blog posts... well, okay, I'm all over that.  Blogging in my jammies and posting photos about stuff I love to do?  Count me in.  I've been a follower of the Fire blog for a while now.  Just between you and me, I think I'm on the list of contributors so I don't post so many questions.  :)

My plan for this week is to string you along with a simple, easy as buying a slice of pie, dyeing tutorial.  Show you the good stuff, briefly point to what can go wrong, and then inform you that I have no idea where you can buy the stuff you need.  But wait... I will give you an opportunity over on my blog this week to win your own little bundle of "secret string," so don't go away mad.

A few years ago, my daughter and I began playing around experimenting with eco-dyeing, contact printing - whatever you want to call it - when you roll up fabric with leaves, wrap it tightly with string, then boil it for hours, wait weeks before opening the roll and hope you get an image of the leaves.  Well, in the beginning we didn't!  But boy oh boy, did we get marks from that string!  One thing led to another and I found a few tubes of cotton string (in my vast stash of yarn and with a little help from my friends) that dye cloth when you simply boil it.

Ignore the fabric in the photo above - that was a sample of contact printed poinsettia leaves and it washed out completely.  Just toss out those holiday plants and move on.

One last photos of a project I've done with the string-that-dyes.  Bookmarks with a kite image made from weaving the yarn on a 2" square Weave-it loom.  The background is a photo of a watercolor of mine that I printed on the cloth after boiling the fabric with the string.

Come back Wednesday and Friday for some process photos and lots more samples.  Go to my blog for a chance to receive several yards of the string so you can try it at home.  Then you'll be on the lookout for more string that might bleed onto your cloth! This is weaving yarn with a bad rep.  No one wants to weave a plaid fabric only to have the dark yarn bleed onto the lights. And did you know there is artists tissue paper that is made to bleed onto fabric? The quilt forums are full of discussions about how do you remove dye that has bled from one fabric to the others.  Maybe we should try marking fabric with some of that bleeding fabric.

What if ...

"Pop" Art Experiment

Since most of us in the US are recovering from a turkey hangover, I thought I would just play for today and let you guys be my guinea pigs.

This summer Wil and I experimented with REAL egg shells (we had a lot of scrambled egg breakfasts for several days!) with paint inside. Then we threw the paint eggs at a canvas. Found out that I am one of those who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn....but....I do have a very artful driveway!

Anyway, that got me thinking and one thing led to another and I thought about balloons as a vehicle for color. Wanted to try it out before it snowed but most of you know how that goes sometimes. Life just doesn't cooperate!

So, I'm not coming to you today as an "expert" in this technique but more to discover together just what might happen if.......You are going to get to see the first experiments and then at the end I will tell you what I'm thinking is the next step. AND...I hope you guys will chime in with YOUR ideas as well!

*******This is a messy (but fun!) technique for dyeing so you WILL want to wear clothing you don't mind getting dye splattered.

"Pop" Art Experiment

Materials:
fabric prepared to be dyed
dyes of your chosen colors (mixed and ready to go)
balloons
small funnel
straight pin
trays (optional)
metal grids (optional)

First I started out with pre-dyed fabrics that were rather plain though. I soaked them in soda ash to prep them for the experiment.

NOTE: You will want to do the next step over the sink!

After I mixed the dye, I got out my balloons and a small funnel.

 I poured the dye in through the funnel. Being over the sink is necessary because one balloon already had pin hole in it and leaked the minute I poured in the dye. I also blew them up and tied them over the sink...just in case. Here is the balloon with the dye inside.

I wanted to do the first experiment with a white fabric to better see how the dye fell when the balloon was popped. I put all my fabrics on trays 1) it is quicker to lay them out and 2) it is very cold here today and I wanted to get outside and back in very quickly!!

Here is the result. I popped the balloon about 2 feet above the fabric. I think next time I'll go for more altitude.

Now to pop the dye over the hand-dyed fabrics. I placed them on metal mesh and racks this time to keep them from sitting in the dye after it splashed. Then onto the trays and outside we go with fabrics and balloons all ready. My husband (who is a dear to go out in 4F degrees to take photos for me) manned the camera.

I placed them closer together to take advantage of any over-splashing. That might not be the look you want but you can certainly put them farther apart or only do one at a time. Then hold the dye balloon over the fabric (I used mixing blue, cayman island green and grape)

For these I held the balloon about 3 or so feet above the fabrics.

Now we run very quickly indoors before the fabric freezes!!!.........

And here are the wet results.

Next into the batching closet for the required time. The hardest part.....the waiting.......

After hours passed. I rinsed, dried and ironed the fabrics.

These two are not interesting at all. Only in one little corner was there something happening.  Too much dye in one place.

These are better. The one on the right is my favorite. But the closeup of the one on the left shows some interesting patterns.

My next plan will be to use smaller balloons with less dye in it to get smaller areas of dye with each one. 

So....what do you think of "Pop" Art? I'd LOVE to hear any ideas or tweaks you come up with. It's so much fun to learn and discover together!!