Back again....

Gee, it's been almost a month since I was here to post...guess I had better get going!

Fabric Dyeing ---this was a totally new experience for me (other than tie dyeing)... this was a FAT trade, Plain to Fancy, taking plain pieces of muslin and transforming them. First of course I had to get some dyes! There are many kinds out there so I purchased a little bit of many of them: spray on, procion, lumiere, and oh, yes, food coloring! I have since added some alcohol inks to my stash.

 

One of the methods that fascinated me and I thought would be easy (it was) was dyeing using shaving cream. You make a layer of shaving cream in a pan (I used a large flat roasting pan) and then put your dyes in that. I used the neon food coloring for some of it, then also used porcion dyes, both mixed and then with a little dry powder sprinkled on top along with some rock salt. I also did one with the spray on fabric paint. I found that to make the fabric a little stiff.

On some of them I did a batik-type resist but used Elmer's Gel Glue. Squirt it out of the bottle into the design you want, let it dry and then dye your fabric. When done, rinse your fabric well to dissolve the glue and voila! You have a batik look. 

I found it interesting that the food coloring fabric, which I scrunched up, had some interesting 'veins' in it...gave the fabric an extra dimension that I wasn't expecting. None really proved to me a favorite but all were interesting and I hope I can get some more fabric done this summer. I have some directions for doing a 'sun resist' where you paint the fabric and then put it out in the sun with interesting items on top of it...the paints will wick out from under the objects and leave a design. 

Left to right, top to bottom: shaving cream and neon food coloring; gel glue resist with spray on fabric paints; the bottom two were both gel glue resist with

 shaving cream and porcion dyes. Some of the dyes were liquid and some were the dry powder and a little bit of rock salt tossed on.

The other thing that FAT was doing was PSIs - "plus-size Inchies". Inchies are 1-inch square little decorated charm like do-dads. Plus-size are inch and a half. The theme was The Four Elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. I made mine out of felt: green for earth, white for wind, red for fire, and blue for water. I stitched the same color (as the felt) beads on each one and

 then using fabric puff paint wrote the Japanese characters for each of the elements on the back. We made 5 sets, 4 to trade and 1 to keep.