Procrastinating caftan

Well!! I have been tossing this white rayon caftan aside, into drawers and anywhere else that I can't see it. WHAT can I possibly do with this HUGE caftan. I think it was a case of "white page fear".
Yesterday I decided to dye some sports bars that I recently purchased (more WHITE) that needed lots and lots of color. I also dyed burlap, scrim, cotton thread both embroidery and pearl and corn husks which didn't come out. I learned a  very important lesson.

Lesson learned:
When you soak fabric in soda ash and use your high speed spinner to extract all the soda ash, you need tons more dye than if you had just hand squeezed out the soda ash.

What happened:
After squirking ALL the dye I had made up on two measley sports bars, a small piece of burlap, an even smaller piece of scrm and two small hanks of floss I ended up filling a spray bottle with soda ash to try to get the dye to MOVE.

After Lesson:
I wrang out the caftan by hand (slightly drippy) laid it out on my open trash bag, did my gathery thing and squirted dye which to my delight wicked and spread through the rayon. See me smiling?

The reults:

 

close-up of caftan draped as only rayon can...

Aidan my Springer who knows what to do when anyone shows up with a camera!

Later that day I soda soaked 5 yards of white cloth for a new technique I am working on (stay tuned). T H A T is an appropriate use of a high speed spinner. The fabric was dry, folded and put aside for another play day within a hour. I think I loved my high speed spinner just a bit too much. When used for the correct thing, it is invaluable but when not...learn from my lesson.

Spring Flowers

I renamed the "spring 9 patch" after dyeing more fabric for another improvisational quilt about spring air. I have not started on this. I am doing a parfait dye for the technique driven blog I am involved with called And then we set it on fire  As I type I am over-dyeing 6 pieces of black and white fabric using yellow (bottom), blue (middle), and red (top) dyes in a parfait for the blog. Photos will be added to THIS post later today so if they're not here check back in a few hours.
I lost a good friend this week. She was a lovely lady I stayed nights with for 3 years and her loss has left a bit of a hole in my heart. I wanted to do a mindless piece of quilting to just let my mind spin in neutral so I made a pin cushion out of scraps from Spring Flowers. It was the first piece I made using paper piecing. It was fun and just what the doctor ordered. I got the pattern from the Kemshalls, Thr3fold Journal #4.

Meanwhile...
Here are the pieces I dyed Parfait style. What a bust. They are too primary even though I added a pinch of black to knock back the colors. Not every experiment is a success.

                                                      These are embroidery threads I added

                                                       This one I like.

I'll never be a successful documenter

  This past weekend, the FIVE took a workshop from Wen Redmond on "Digging into digital printing". For the first time in so long I can't even remember when, I carefully saved samples and documented every step of each variety of medias both substrates and grounds. I came home and neatly placed everything in a plastic folder and placed it carefully on the shelf for future reference.

Today I decided to dye ONE piece of fabric for the back of my spring flowers quilt (a.k.a. Spring nine patch - see below). I was very excited about the wonderful olive green and used a turquoise sponge to wipe up a spill. OLIVE AND TURQUOISE! I made many trips up the stairs for more and more fabric, making turquoise with blue and black, then turquoise with golden yellow, then one with even more golden yellow. Then I thought "What if I take the fabric out of the dye after an hour (I used scalding hot water to mix the dyes) and add more fabric to the partially exhausted dye"? Or what if I use full strength dye in one pot and watered down dye in another?

Well, I am about to do the wash out now. My measurement of dye powder was haphazard. How much water did I add to each pot? What exactly did I do to which? I guess my commitment to documentation has fallen by the wayside. I guess when the muse is dancing there is no time for writing, at least in my studio...

snow storm activities

First off, I decided to do 30 dyes (LWI) of the color wheel. I used many of the ones I made earlier in the year, that would be last year, so I went from primary to secondary in 5 steps giving me 30 colors. My back was killing me so today after the wash out (3 wash outs) I SAT DOWN to do the ironing.

The processing

 

Three batches - 2 wet and one dried

Waiting to dry out and be put away to play another day

 

These were all dyed yesterday while the blizzard flew and the winds howled

While washing these out, drying and cleaning the kitchen, I mean the wet studio!, I popped a few snow dyes on my metal cloth rig and let them sit. After lunch I nuked for 4 mintes each, washed out, dried and ironed EVERYTHING. Oh my aching back!!!!! BUT what a reward.

 

Looky, Looky, Looky

I have finished the "robins egg blue" shirt and I love it.

 

The brown dye ended up olive green, along with the purple final dye, and the combo is my favorite color combination.  

 

You can almost see the iridescence.  

These are details of the other shirt that was tray dyed. I think you just need to see the shirt in person to appreciate the nuances of color. On me it looks like a bunch of blotchy colors.

And now for the fun toys:

             NOW.... think quilt.........................................YEAH!