Glittering banner celebration on Mothers Day

“Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heart; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks.” ~Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday’s Goddess Banner/Prayer Flag workshop was a different kind of Mothers Day celebration. We created personal statements in fiber with dyeing, surface design, phototransfer, handwritten quotes and personal iconography. It was a celebration of the idea of nurturing the spirit of Mother Earth – and we had a really fantastic time!

OK, so I don’t usually use glitter in my workshopstoo darn frivolous, right?not this time! We glittered our banners, our gloves, our faces (inadvertently) – it looked like a Tinkerbell convention. And every single work was beautiful and heartfelt.

Even though some of us had kids who were far away, the Studio was a real place of creative belonging yesterday. What an experience! Take a look at our video:

Indigo Blue, Take Two

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The magic of indigo never gets old, even to novice fiber artists like me. Sunday’s workshop was flat-out fun – many thanks go to Mary Ann Johnson, whose expertise in shibori and dyeing greatly enhanced our experience. The weather was perfect – our fabric dried quickly in the breeze and the sunshine on our makeshift clothesline.

Here are the basics of how we did it:
The fabric is tied, clamped, rusted stitched, crumpled – any or all. Then it is submerged slowly into the indigo vat for about a minute. The bound fabric is gently removed from the dye bath, avoiding  splashing or dripping into the vat, as this introduces oxygen back into the dye. The fabric looks green when you first take it out of the bucket. This is when the magic happens (or to be more precise, chemistry). Indigo develops its color when it is exposed to oxygen. Once the fabric is in contact with the air, it starts changing color and turns from green to blue. You can see some of this happening in the video, below.

If you are new to this process, I highly recommend that you start with the Jacquard Indigo Kit. It has everything you need to make true indigo plant-based dye. The video below, from Jacquard, shows how to do it.

Things to watch out for – holes in rubber gloves!  The biggest danger, though, is addiction to indigo dyeing, particularly when you realize it can also dye paper and yarn.

I can’t wait to cover some journals with my indigo fabric, and perhaps combine indigo-dyed paper with encaustic. It’s true blue indigo love!

 

 

Indigo Wednesday

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I’ve scheduled a few Wednesday afternoon workshops this spring at the Studio  and it’s working out well. Yesterday’s Indigo session was kind of a “test drive” of the three hour format – the second Indigo workshop is on Sunday, and there is another special request group on Monday, so the Studio will be blue for almost a week.

Wednesday’s participants had some excellent suggestions about how to keep the dyeing process flowing during the short three hours. It was a rainy day, so our drying was done inside or on the bench under the awning. Everything clicked, the indigo did its magic, and we had a fantastic time.

I’ll be wrapping up the indigo experiences next week and will give you some tips and resources on how you can do this at home or in your own studio. One of the most-repeated comments from yesterday’s students was , “This is sooooo much easier than I thought it would be!” And it is!

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Monday morning roundup

fabricGoddesses were out in force at the Goddess Banner workshop yesterday. It was a gorgeous afternoon for drying colorful, glittery fabric on the rack outside the Studio. Among the participants were Monika Astara (my favorite fashion designer) and Lisa Stamper Meyer from Roadhouse Arts, as well as several talented FASA members who specialize in surface design. So, even though we used the some of the same images, the results were totally diverse and eclectically spectacular. Take a look at the video, and then I’ll tell you about some of the techniques.

Aren’t those wonderful? We did a combination of Small Space Dyeing that Rosemary Uchniat teaches in her workshop and digital image transfer that’s done with hand sanitizer (yep!). I learned about this technique from an artist in Rehoboth, Delaware, and it works great on fabric. Basically, you print your image on an inkjet overhead transparency, spread a layer of hand sanitizer gel on your fabric, place the image face down, pat gently and leave for 15 minutes. You’ll get different results based on how much gel is on the fabric, but it works great. We protected the digital transfer by taping freezer paper on the back.

And speaking of Rosemary Uchniat, guess who won the Friday Freebie Mermaid Shard? Yep, Rosemary – congrats – it was totally random. Now she’ll have to make a mermaid!

Have a great Monday, y’all – I’m headed to NYC and Boston for a few days to see the family. Will send art reports along the way!

 

Discharge fabric design – a cheap flashy bleach job

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Mike went to a garage sale on Saturday and found some brass Asian calligraphy characters that were used as wall decorations. The more I looked at them, the more I knew I didn’t want them on the wall.

But the designs were cool. So I took an old black shirt and used some diluted bleach to create a reverse stencil design in what’s called Discharge Dyeing. Discharging is the process of removing dye (by destroying or altering the dye “chromophores”) with various chemicals or bleach, often in pleasing patterns or designs through Shibori or Tie Dye methods, or by stamping, stenciling or block printing (definition from Dharma Trading Company).

brass copy Here’s what you needa black shirt (cotton, already washed), some chlorine bleach (Clorox), diluted 50/50 with water and put in a small spray bottle (label it!! Work outside!!), a non porous board like foam core to put between the front and back of the shirt to keep the bleach from bleeding through, scrap paper to mask off your bleaching area, masking tape to stick the paper to the shirt, and some INTERESTING OBJECTS to use as reverse stencils. I used the brass calligraphy symbols, but you could use anything – doilies, leaves stick-on letters, shells, twine and sticks – be creative.

Step One: Assemble your stuff on your work surface. Make sure that any stray bleach mist won’t damage the surface.

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Step Two: Put your non-porous board between the layers of the shirt and smooth out the fabric This protects the back of the shirt and also makes the process easier by giving the surface some support.

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Step Three: Lay out your objects in a pleasing pattern – center them if you like. You can use anything – stencils, lace, metal washers – and you can test your designs by trying them on black construction paper first – it “discharges” like black fabric.

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Step four: Mask off everything except the area you’re going to mist with the bleach solution. Here, you can see I’m taping scrap paper around the edges of the area using blue painter’s tape.

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Step Five: Once the masking is complete, you’re ready to spraybe careful of the fumes. Even diluted, bleach can be strong, but you are using just a small amount and working quickly. I used a little spritzer bottle and mixed about half a cup of the 50.50 water-bleach solution.

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Step Six: Spritz the bleach solution over the exposed area of the shirt. working quickly and just misting the surface. There’s no need to soak the fabric. Pay special attention to edges of the shapes.

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Step Seven: Watch in amazement as the color changes in seconds. Every black fabric has a distinct undercolor, some greenish, some rust. This shirt turns almost orange in the areas that are discharged with bleach.

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Step 8 – Remove the objects(s) to test the progress. Looking good! This was a small wooden disk with a hole drilled in it – not sure where it came from, but I like the pattern it left.

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Step Nine: Remove all of the objects carefully – no drips unless you want that effect – and make sure you like the resulting color, which usually takes less than a minute to develop), The bleach action stops automatically since you just misted the surface.

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Step Ten blot-dry the front of the shirt with a paper towel – otherwise, you will get damp bleach on other parts of the shirt when you move it. You can use a hair dryer after you blot it, or you can just let it dry in place.

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Step Eleven: Voila! Step back and congratulate yourself on your arty shirt – you should wash it before you wear it. This particular shirt is an “easy tee” by JJill that is much enhanced by its new design!

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Step Twelve: Hire a cat to arrange itself artfully on your new garment – if you spread the shirt out after it comes out of the dryer, the cat may arrange itself for free whether you want it to or not.

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There are tons of ways to do discharge dyeing on black fabric, but a diluted bleach mist will give you fine lines around a stencil. Be careful, though, don’t get bleach solution on unwanted surfaces! Or cats.