Use Your Treasures!

I was inspired by a recent blog post by Melanie Testa, where she writes that she's been printing cloth for years, and now wants to use up her stash completely instead of stashing and storing fabric. I can relate to that. I have loads of my own fabrics in my stash too. Some of the cloth is ugly, some is precious to me. But the point is: there is no point in storing it. It deserves to be used! "Using the things you have and make causes you to make more, doesn’t it?" Melanie says. And she's right! Whatever fabric I've dyed or printed - I can make more of! And if there is one that is exquisitely special and unrepeatable, well, why not use it for something I use every day so that I can enjoy it all the time? Why should I keep it folded up in a box? And when I make more fabric, there will be more exquisitely special and unrepeatable fabrics to use.

So, as a warm-up, I decided to make a coaster set from some of my hand-dyed fabrics that have a Japanese feel to me. I combined them with linen as a backing fabric, as I love the combination of printed cotton and plain linen.

The techniques that have been used to pattern the fabrics are: low water immersion dyeing, shibori, direct dye painting and printing, soy wax resist and discharge. I was quite surprised by how many techniques I'd managed to tick off!

Thanks for visiting my blog! Go forth, my friend, and use your fabrics. And then: make (or buy) more lovely fabric!

Discharged!

Yesterday, as I was picking out my usual laundry detergent at the supermarket, my eyes stopped at something interesting: Dr Beckmann's Colour Run Remover (English link, svensk länk). Hah! Potential! I grabbed a package straight away.

Today I put Dr Beckmann's colour remover to the test, and it passed with flying colours. In fact, it was so efficient that nearly all the colour on my sample pieces flew away. But let's take this from the beginning.

On the package it reads that you should leave the item you want to strip of its colour soaking for at least 4 hours, perhaps even over night. So I mixed the powder in hot water from the tap,  took a few of my hand dyed pieces of cloth, which I'd folded and scrunched in tie-dye style, and plunged them into the colour remover. Now, I was expecting to leave the fabric there for 4 hours, so I wasn't paying much attention to what was happening in the bucket. I should have. Oh my! Dr Beckmann was quick to get the job done. Not even a minute had passed when I noticed that the first items I'd added to the liquid were turning very pale  So, I had to take everything out immediately. The first two samples were so pale that there was hardly any patterning on them at all anymore. But the other two: Yay! Cool! Bellissimo!

Before:

After:

 

Before:

After:

You wouldn't belive, would you, that this piece of fabric actually came from the bright blue one I show you above? Where did the rusty brown come from? It's gorgeous!

I also did some icecream tub dyeing with EMO Tuotanto's fibre reactive dye later. I'm trying to explore this product, since it's a Finnish brand, and a lot easier to get hold of for me than Procion MX dyes. I hope to discover ways of using the EMO dyes in the same ways that I've used Procion MX dyes. That would make me a very happy puppy.

I can't wait to get to the rinsing stage with these! Yum!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week! - Annika

Irresistible Flour Paste

I've dropped hints about flour paste resist experiments a couple of times, and now it's time to deliver. I really liked this technique. There was something deeply satisfying about messing about with the gooey flour paste. It brought out the inner kindergartener in me. It's also totally non-toxic, and it was quite a relief not to have to worry about gloves, face masks and safety goggles for a change.

The technique is quite simple: you make a mixture of approximately equal parts of plain white flour and water, spread it over the cloth, make marks in the wet paste, let it all dry and then apply thin paint over the dry paste. The paint will enter into the marks, as well as cracks that form when the paste dries, and create patterns on the fabric. The patterns are revealed when the flour paste is washed away.

Wet flour paste on fabric, and marks made with a wooden kebab stick

Dry flour paste. I let it dry for 48 hours: when the paste feels warm to the touch it's dry.

Paint applied over the dry paste. I used thinned fabric paint and let the paint cure for 48 hours before rinsing off the flour paste resist. I didn't heat fix the paint with an iron, but might try ironing carefully from the back next time, just to see what happens.

I used thinned fabric paint. First the paint was quite runny, which created this kind of effekt:

I thickened the paint a bit and the lines became sharper:

With thicker paint it was more difficult to get the paint into the cracks in the resist. However, when the paint was drying, the cracks widened and I could go in with a second layer of paint in certain areas:

Pretty cool effects, right?

I also tried bleach:

Notice the colour of the discharged areas: peach. This is the same dark blue fabric that I earlier used with Jacquard discharge paste. That gave a totally different colour:

Try this technique! It's not for those who demand instant gratification, as there is a certain amount of waiting time, but it's loads of fun! Just remember to flush the rinse water with flour paste down the toilet to avoid any problems with your plumbing.

Happy May Day and see you again soon! - Annika