Things Are Cooking in My Kitchen Again

It's been ages since I did any dyeing. Yesterday I decided to change that and to try something I haven't done before: acid dyeing wool with fibre-reactive dye. I have a knitted scarf with matching wrist warmers that I made several years ago from some lovely hand painted 100 % merino wool from Uruguay. You can see the original post I wrote about the wool and the scarf here.

The scarf

However, after the yarn had been knitted, the overall impression was a bit more orange and speckled than what I had expected and this has bothered me ever since. Well, I'm a dyer, so why should I let something like that bother me? So I got out my pot and dye and got started.

Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble...

I normally prefer cold-water and low-water dyeing techniques to hot water and immersion dyeing, but I enjoyed trying something else for a change. I haven't had much experience in dyeing wool and using an acid dye bath instead of an alkaline one, so I was curious to see the result. Wool takes a bit of patience as you can't rush the process unless you want your yarn or knitted garment felted in the process. Many of us have indeed personal experience of what happens when you throw a woolen garment in hot water and agitate it. I managed to make a trivet out of my favourite beret many years ago.

The result was perhaps not as saturated as I expected, but I love the way the original colours  (violet, orange and pink) still shine through even though the overall colour has been modified. The scarf is much nicer now that the lighter areas have been replaced with red.

Just enough red to even out the colour, but preserve some of the original colours.

I'm pretty sure this will be a renaissance for this scarf. In fact, I've even used it indoors today because it's so soft and cosy.

Thanks for visiting my blog! I hope I've inspired you to give overdyeing a go if you have some item of clothing in the back of your wardrobe that just needs a bit of colour adjustment. Just remember that synthetic fibres do not accept dye like natural fibres, so make sure you check the fibre contents first, and read the dye manufacturer's instructions carefully before you start! Have fun!

Exhibition in Vaasa

I've been busy lately, and one of the reasons is an exhibition of my textile work at at Loftet, House of Crafts, in Vaasa, Finland. The exhibition is from 7 January to 4 February 2017. For those who can't go to Vaasa I will post a few images of the room and my work. I apologize for the poor quality of the images. Photography in Finland at this time of year is not ideal as there is hardly any daylight to speak of. Luckily there is photo editing software. 😀

The room

Wall pouches / Väggpåsar

Aurora & She Has Flowers in Her Hair

Aurora & Blommor i håret

Pouch with sashiko, Japanese knot bag & Papaver

Påse med sashiko, japansk knutväska & Papaver

Art Nouveau & Winter / Jugend & Vinter

These Are a Few of My Favourite Things

"Pretty Purses" / "Finbörsar"

Another Chance / En ny chans

I hope you enjoyed this little tour!

Solar-Powered Fabric Design

I recently tried Jacquard Solarfast sunlight-developed dye for the first time, and after I published an image of the results on Instagram, I had a few questions about the process, so I thought I'd write a blog post about what I did.

Solarfast is a light-sensitive dye, which means that the colour develops when it is exposed to UV-light. You paint the dye onto fabric or paper, add some kind of resist that will block the light in certain areas, and then place it all in a sunny spot for about 10 minutes. During this time the exposed areas will react to the light and the colour will develop, whereas the areas in shadow will remain more or less unchanged, depending on how solid the resist is.

You could use objects and plants as resists, but I was interested in my own patterns and only used transparencies as resists. On one transparency I made a printout of one of my drawings with an inkjet printer - or in fact I made two printouts that I combined to make the dark areas more dense. The original drawing was a scanned line drawing, but I filled it with the bucket fill tool in my image-editing software.

On another transparency I drew a pattern with a black Posca paint pen. I'm sure other brands would work as well, but it is important that the ink is very solid, otherwise light will go through it.

On the last transparency I painted the same pattern but with black gesso and a brush.

According to the manufacturers instructions the dye has to be wet in order to work, but if it is too wet under a transparency there's a risk that condensation will form and interfere with the process. This is exactly what happened with my prints. Since I hadn't used the dye before it was impossible to know what is too wet, so I didn't worry too much about this. While developing the prints I could see condensation forming under the film, and how it would block the light in certain areas. But I could also see that this would not be a big issue for me, because the result was a beautiful mottled effect in a rusty brown colour. If you look closely at the images of the prints you will see brown (not fully developed) areas mixed in with the black (fully developed) areas. This is the result of condensation under the film. Here are the prints alongside the resists:

I really liked this process: it is simple, quick and has a lot of potential. Just imagine what you could do with photographs and scanned images of your own writing and drawings! The dye is ready to use (no more mixing toxic powders) and it comes in several different colours. I'm pretty sure this is a product I will return to again, because there is so much more to explore!

Thanks for visiting my blog and have fun printing in the sun!

Happy Walpurgis Night!

Here in Scandinavia we celebrate Walpurgis Night the day before May Day, and balloons are part of the celebration. I found some balloons in my stash and had the idea that perhaps I could doodle or paint on them. It was quite addictive and a lot of fun, and I couldn't stop after the first trial, so I ended up decorating them all in different ways. Here's the result:

I started with a mandala pattern with a thick marker pen.

Since the marker worked so well, I felt braver and tried a Posca paint pen next.

Then I did an allover pattern just in paint pen.

I started thinking about other media that might work on rubber and figured it was time to try alcohol markers and the Tim Holtz Spritzer Tool I recently invested in. I used a crocheted doily as a stencil.

And from alcohol markers it was only a short step to turn to solvent ink. I used a soft foam stamp and Staz On ink for this balloon.

Finally I thought about paint, and decided to try watered down gesso. That worked as well!

Here are the tools and media I used to decorate my balloons:

Pretty fun right? Now go forth my friend and decorate some balloons of your own! Thanks for visiting my blog and Happy Spring!

May I present: Franka!

It's so satisfying to occasionally finish something from the UFO-pile. Those UnFinished Objects that for some reason always get pushed down to the bottom of the To Do-list by other projects or chores that seem more urgent. A quilt with the comic album heroine Franka has been one of those projects. I started it in 2011 and worked on it off and on for a while, but for some reason it ended up in the UFO-department. Just over a month ago I found it and decided to finish it this time.

If you want to have a look at the earlier blog posts about Franka, you can either click on the label Franka in the list to the right, or, if you prefer to see the entries one by one in chronological order from the first to the last, you can follow these links:

The story behind the Franka quilt
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/05/normal-0-false-false-false_29.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/06/normal-0-false-false-false_12.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/06/normal-0-false-false-false_22.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/07/things-are-cooking-in-my-kitchen.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/08/white-sand-for-franka.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/09/fire-festival-and-fun-with-franka.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/09/shes-smiling-now.html
http://www.salundannika.blogspot.fi/2011/10/flora-fauna.html

To be honest, I think this task might have been the one that put me off Franka at the time. I knew it would be a challenge to cut out the letters in the thought bubble, and to keep track of all the little bits that I had to save for the inside of the letters!

Another thing that worried me was the questions of how I should quilt it. Originally I had planned to quilt the background water in some way, but the more I thought about it, the more I hesitated. This is fused appliqué with a black fabric behind a very light fabric, so any mistakes would most likely result in tiny black holes/dots where the needle had penetrated the fabric. I was not willing to take that risk.

The solution was to only pin the quilt within the black outlines, and also to quilt it along the black edges. This means that the quilting doesn't really show from the front, and also that the fused appliqué is not stitched at all, only fused. This was another concern until I reached the conclusion that this is an art quilt, meant to only hang on a wall and perhaps never to be washed. The fusible web is a strong glue and it will hold everything securely in place for this purpose. Having reached this insight I was at peace and felt that I could finally finish my work.

There were a lot of thread ends to knot off as neatly as possible...

because the secret quilting is revealed on the back of the quilt:

I chose a facing as finishing method

And here she is: Franka!

Oh - It's even nicer than I thought... 

And here she is alongside with the original inspiration: a comics album heroine from the 1970's, drawn by Dutch artist Henk Kuijpers.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Paper Fabric Christmas Fun

One of the many materials that I enjoy working with is what I call paper fabric. It's not paper and it's not fabric, but a combination of the two. The basic technique is pretty simple: you saturate a piece of cotton with diluted PVA glue and then add papers to it. Thinner papers work best, and I like to combine papers that I've bought or found with papers that I've decorated myself.

A selection of tissue paper with stamped and hand drawn patterns

It's wise to prepare all the papers in advance, because the technique is quite messy and it's difficult to tear paper with sticky fingers...

The most difficult part is waiting for it all to dry...

A sheet of paper fabric ready to be used. It's difficult to describe: it's a bit like card stock, and a bit like artificial leather or plastic and a bit like birch bark. It's stronger than paper and you can sew it by hand or machine.

When I first started making paper fabric I used it mainly for card-making:

but later I've discovered all sorts of other uses for it. This time I set myself a challenge to use it for a variety of Christmas decorations.

I cut it into strips and made a Froebel star

As I realized that both the front and the back of the paper fabric would be visible, I painted the back with white acrylic paint. The star looks quite different when you turn it around.

I also made a woven heart basket, and realized that weaving thin strips like this is pretty challenging.

If you want to make life easier for yourself, you can skip the basket and make the heart two-dimensional instead.

This round little ornament is quick as well as cute.

But my favourite has to be the pod! (I made a pod last year too. Perhaps I should make a new one every year?)

I thought it'd be fun to make a filigree candle wrap too, but of course this is only for LED candles. I wouldn't want to start a fire!

And then I made a filigree ornament.

Finally, I made a little garland with hearts on a string

and festive bunting for the Christmas tree:

Of course you could use ordinary paper or card stock for these objects, but I think it's a lot more fun if you can use a material that you made yourself. I hope I've inspired you to make some festive decorations yourself!

Thanks for visiting my blog!