Quilt Camp 2020 Week 2 - Resists

What's a resist?  A resist is something that blocks the absorption of paint or dye.  For this week's exercise, we worked with 2 resists.  One is a water-based resist made by Jacquard.  The other is white acrylic paint; Sue used Artistic Artifacts fluid textile paint and Elizabeth used Pro-Chem white paint. All of these products were printed though our Thermofax screens and allowed to dry overnight.

For the water based resist above, Sue used the crackle screen.

 

 For the white paint resist, Sue used the patterned circles screen; Elizabeth used the chain link screen.

After allowing the resists to dry, the next step is to color the fabric.  You can use dye or paint.  Being in different places, we are working with the supplies we have on hand. Sue chose to use Dye-na-Flow, which is made by Jacquard and is described as "extra vivid, ultra-transparent fluid acrylic paint that simulates a true dye."  It is very fluid, like water, and can be diluted with water for a less intense color.  For smaller pieces, it provides the ease of paint while acting like a dye.  Elizabeth used 2 different types of paints - Tumble Dye, which is a spray, and Setacolor which she diluted by half with water.  Elizabeth also used a wet sponge brush to spread the tumble dye which in addition to spreading the paint, brushed it off the white paint resist.

  

Sue's water-based resist piece was colored with a combination of teal and sulphur green.

Her white paint resist piece was colored with yellow, orange and red, brushed on in scattered areas.

The yellow was painted on first, then orange, then red.  More of all 3 colors were used to fill in and blend colors. 

Elizabeth colored her fabric with blue Tumble Dye and Canary Setacolor.  Where they overlapped and blended some green is the result.

After allowing the fabrics to dry, they were heat set by ironing from the back side.  Then they were hand washed in warm water with synthropol  detergent, rinsed and allowed to dry again. 

 

The water-based resist washes out and leaves the original fabric visible, in this case white. The white paint absorbs some of the paint color so it is no longer stark white, but the pattern is clearly visible. After drying and heat setting (ironing), you're newly printed fabrics are ready to use in your next project!

Tumble Dye Part 3

A few weeks ago I did a couple of posts about using Tumble Dye, part 1 and part 2.  In this post I'll share the results.  With the first 2 pieces, I started with wet fabric and sprayed on the dye.  This allowed the colors to blend, but I was also concerned that they might be more faded looking when the fabric was washed.  So I decided to dye a 3rd piece starting with dry fabric.  First some pictures.

This is the leaf print after dyeing and heat setting - I don't think I showed this one in the previous post.

This is the 3rd piece I dyed, which has a more speckled look due to working with dry fabric.   This is the piece after heat setting but before washing.  The final step in my "experiment" was washing the fabrics to see how well the dye held up.  Below are the other 2 pieces prior to washing.

Finally, here are all 3 pieces after running through the washer and dryer. 

Keeping in mind that the lighting in the photos may not be the best, I purposely took the before & after washing photos in the same spot for comparison purposes.  I don't see a big difference, so I was pleased with the final result, the colors appear pretty much the same.  Just be sure to heat set, either with an iron or in the dryer before washing.  While this method does not give as intense color on the wrong side as standard dyeing processes, it's a viable alternative for smaller pieces, t-shirts, or if you just don't have time for the process of MX-procion dyes.  I would, however, recommend the Mist-It sprayers mentioned in the part 2 post for better control of the sprayer.  Give it a try!

Tumble Dye Part 2

Fall Festival Wrap-Up

Winners of last week's giveaway were posted yesterday.  If you were not one of the lucky winners, some of the items are available in our Etsy shop  - the screens, of course, additional scarves, and tote bags.  More of the wall art quilts will be added soon.  Consider purchasing hand made items for your holiday gifts, and check out the other Etsy shops too!

Tumble Dye Part 2

After preparing my fabrics I was ready to try the Tumble Dye. The tutorials  at SEI Crafts show that you can wet the fabric first for more blending of colors, or use it dry for more color intensity.  I decided to wet it and scrunch it to help the colors blend.  After the initial spray, when I opened up the fabric, the color hadn't spread as much as I expected it to, so I decided to leave it open and continue spraying.

This is the fabric when it is still wet - trying to achieve a fall color blend.  The red was a bit more pink than I expected, so more over-spraying of colors was necessary to achieve the look I wanted.  So far, a disappointment with this product is the quality of the sprayer on the bottle.  I was hoping for a finer mist than what I got, and didn't feel like I had a lot of control with where the paint landed.  After spraying both pieces, I remembered a mist sprayer that Elizabeth and I had both bought in our shop hops this summer.  So I pulled that out and poured some of the Tumble Dye into the smaller sprayer.  Good decision - this gave me more of the control I was looking for.  The product I used is called Mist-It.

It is marketed not only for crafts but also things like perfume.  Since I bought this in a shop, I decided to search on line (by Imprint Crafts) and found it at SoftExpressions.  They come is 3-packs or singles.  I placed an order and they were very quick - less than a week from placing the order to receiving it.  Now I can work with multiple colors in the finer spray at the same time. More on the tumble dye results in part 3.

Tumble Dye

A few weeks ago we attended the Original Sew Expo in Fredericksburg and one of the products we purchased is called Tumble Dye.

I decided to do some experimenting to see how well this product works.  Previously, I have used powdered Procion MX dyes and Rit, which involve care to protect yourself from the dye particles.  This is a liquid dye already mixed that comes in a spray bottle, so eliminates the toxic nature of the powdered dye.  It is sold by SEI Crafts; on this page there's also a link to video tutorials.  I watched these before conducting my experiment.

The first thing I did was prepare 2 pieces of fabric, both 100% cotton.  On one piece, I printed with an all-over crackle screen to make a white on white resist.  On the other piece, I printed fall leaves in black with the idea of creating a fall-colored background on the piece of fabric.  Both of these were allowed to dry over night and then were heat set so the paint would not wash out.

The next post will show the dye application and some of the results.