Quilt Camp Day 10

We promised to do something different today and we did!  It was Sue's last day at quilt camp so we tried to squeeze in as much as we could.  Of course, just when we get in the groove, one has to leave.  We watched several episodes of a Quilting Arts DVD over the past few days and one episode featured Julie Booth and her process for using liquid dish detergent as a resist.  We know Julie because she also teaches at Artistic Artifacts, and knew about this technique from her book, Fabric Printing at Home, but had not tried it yet.  (Yes, we're a little behind.  Julie's book has been out a couple of years and the DVD is series 1700 from 2015.)  At any rate, we had fun playing with this resist. 

The first step involves mark making with the dish soap.  Here Elizabeth is using a stiff brush to make dots.  After the soap dries (about 30 minutes), the next step is a wash of diluted transparent paint.  Julie used black in her demo; Sue used peacock and Elizabeth used navy blue.

After the paint dries, you heat set the paint, then rinse out the dish soap.  Of course, if you want your design in white, you could stop at this point.  After letting the pieces dry again, the next step is adding color with diluted textile paint.  At this point, it's kind of like water color, letting the colors blend where they overlap.

These are our pieces drying on the line.  And close ups below.

Sue's pieces above.  Elizabeth's pieces below.

It was fun to experiment and we learned some things we would do differently next time.  More details in a future post.

Sue also did a bit of thermofax printing.

Our puff ball screen is a little tricky - very easy to get too much paint.

On this piece, half is the puff ball and the other half is ginkgo leaves.  (The intent was to cut in two.)

And this one uses the mum screen in 2 sizes.   This is our favorite of the 3 prints.  And just in case you're missing indigo, here's one more that Elizabeth did, a pillow cover (purchased as a blank.)

Sue will be traveling on Tuesday, so it will be up to Elizabeth to share more tomorrow!

More Indigo

We hope you're not totally tired of indigo and shibori posts yet.  Just one more day of indigo results, then we'll move on to other things - at least that's the plan!

We watched a video by Charlotte Scott that showed more ways to fold, wrap and tie the fabric.  Above are 2 of Elizabeth's pieces, on the left was rolled up like a sushi roll; on the right was folded in half and then loosely formed into a bull's eye and tied with string or rubber bands.

Becky's scarf is done with a variety of items - the wiffle golf balls, floral marbles, 3-d small triangles.  Because it was folded in half, you can see the different results between what was on the inside and what was on the outside.

Molly was resurrected from the loft to display Elizabeth's t-shirt, done with accordion folds and rubber bands.

These are the 4 pieces Sue did yesterday; top is the bull's eye, then a stitched circle piece, the small one is the sushi roll, and the bottom left is spider webs.

And the results, left to right: sushi, spider webs, bull's eye, and stitched circles.  Enlarge the photo to see better detail.

And to prove that we have done other things, Sue started these 2 earlier in the week, trying to get something useful for a desert background.  The piece on the right is bronze, the one of the left started with mocha, and then she added yellow.  Mistake!  Should have left well enough alone, also should have used a different container.  Oh well, lessons learned and it can always be over dyed!

Indigo Round 2

On Saturday we dipped some more prepared pieces in the indigo dye pot, trying different folding, tying and resist techniques.  We also thought we'd show what the "bloom" or "flower" looks like that forms on the top of the pot.  When you want to use the indigo, you first remove the bloom and set it aside, then replace it when you are finished.  As long as the bloom lasts on top of the pot, your dye is still active.  If it disappears, the pot will need to be refreshed.  You can read more about maintaining an indigo pot at the ProChem or Dharma websites.

Sue used some acrylic shapes that were clamped to the folded fabric to create a resist.  In this photo you can see the fabric still oxidizing from green to blue.

Here's the piece after washing and drying.  The shapes came out really crisp.

Elizabeth did this piece which was accordion folded, first in one direction, then the other so it was a small square and held it together with rubber bands.

This one was folded in half (see the dark line down the middle?), then accordion folded and banded.

This was a standard flag fold (triangles).

Sue decided to use the zigzag stitching technique on a t-shirt.

And a few more pieces are hanging on the line today!

Quilt Camp, Day 3, 4, 5

Catching up on our last 3 days, we've spent some time on the business aspects of PGFiber2Art - blog, Facebook, newsletter, and listing new screens in the Etsy shop - and have tried to get back into the creative side of things.  So we don't have quite as much fun stuff to share as we'd like, but here's a glimpse of what we've been up to.

Elizabeth has been busy dyeing - both tie dyeing and ice dyeing.

She also did a sun print with some ferns and Queen Ann's lace.

Sue started off with some gelli plate printing.

And screen printing to test some screens.

She put together a nine-patch to show off some new screens we've added to the Etsy shop (more in another post).

And has also being experimenting with deColourant discharge which takes color out of fabric.

Wednesday we made a trip to Center Harbor and Keepsake Quilting, so that took time away from the "studio".

What else is in store?  More dyeing, of course.  The indigo pot is on the agenda for Friday.  Thursday we are taking a day trip to Lowell, Mass, to the New England Quilt Museum to see the Threads of Resistance exhibit.  Stay tuned for more of our daily quilt camp adventures.