Direct Dye

Last week my friend Eileen was encouraging me to try dipping my ready-for-dye fabrics into soda ash solution (the dye fixative) first and then dyeing them. I have done some pieces before, but when I saw Martha Lever's direct dye pieces on her blog a couple of days ago, I was inspired to try that method again.

Here are the results:

Foam brush and lightly diluted dye...

Foam piece, painted on the side and used as a stamp...

Wood block with strips of weather stripping glued to it for use as a stamp.

Fun!

Fabric Day

Today I am working with a lot of fabric for different reasons...


This morning I started out dyeing fabric for my upcoming vendor booth at the East Cobb Quilt Guild Show (Sept. 18 - 20 in Marrietta, GA), so I decided to try another direct dye technique. I bought some Elmer's Gel School Glue and used it to make designs on fabric yesterday as discussed in a recent Quilting Arts Mag. article.





The glue dried overnight, and this morning I mixed a small amount of Procion MX dye solution with its fixative, soda ash solution, to make dye paint. Here's how the experiment turned out.





When it dries I'll rinse it with my other dyed fabrics to remove the water-soluble glue.



I have also been collecting fabrics for a string quilt for my nephew AJ's freshman year at RIT (Rochester Inst. of Tech.). Gotta start sewing because he moves into his dorm room on Aug. 30th! The school colors are orange and brown but some of the sports uniforms are orange and black, so I'll use all three colors for his quilt. These shirts from Goodwill (re-used fabrics can be wonderful) will go into the quilt to add a "male" touch...



And I found these fabrics in my stash...



The colors will blend in the quilt to make an overall look of orange, brown & black. That's the beauty of string piecing.

Duh, it just occurred to me that I can use this direct dye technique to add words and rough pictures to AJ's quilt! Fellow crafters and artists, this is why we write our ideas down!

Direct Dye Practice

This week I played a little with direct dye; the application of dye with the fixative added so that the dye sets immediately to the fabric. This time I used dry fabric, foam stamps, and a foam brush to apply the dye to the stamps.

Dry fabric gives the stamp image crisp edges. This is the finished piece just before dyeing it again. And next is the piece (still wet) after over-dyeing with sage colored dye.

Would you have guessed that the yellow would remain when over-dyed? It was a surprise to me!

Here's one of my practice machine quilting pieces. The stitches are becoming more regular, finally. I love the pussy willow design at the top of the piece, and above that is a small sample of using Fabrico Markers to fill in color after quilting.