easy peasy

wanting to do some quick and easy natural dyeing, i decided to try a technique using extracts from the extract dyeing book, "colours of the rainbow" by helen melvin. the process is quite fun! i had purchased some silk hankies when in asheville, and decided to dye them along with some wool, linen, alpaca, and cotton.

the two colors i used were osage orange and teal (from hue & dye). i presoaked the fiber in a copper mordant to bring out more greens in the colors. i was rather surprised by which fibers picked up which color more; the wool grabbed the most blue, the silk grabbed the most yellow, and the cellulose fibers tended to the paler tones. i was especially pleased by the alpaca.

i pried apart the silk hankies for spinning later (august when i take a silk spinning class), wound the yarns onto bobbins, and twisted the silk organza to get some pleats when it dries.

another experiment i have going is a traditional indigo vat which has been brewing for awhile now. this shibori example is from a piece of duckcloth i want to make into an oilcloth apron; i'm just waiting for some of the smell to air out of it. when i say traditional, what i mean to say is urine and indigo. but i must say, the vat itself smells less odiferous now than it did when i first started it.

pages softly turning

for the last guild meeting we looked into book making, choosing one of four types to create during the meeting. i have some experience of making books by hand, and readily enjoy the process. in the last few weeks i've come to be inspired by the work of wake robin, and feel the growing urges to retry my hand at making more organic freestyle books.

the book style i chose to make has an interesting spine setup whereby the individual codex are slipped into a separate threaded piece which has been glued to the spine after the inside cover paper is laid down. this style is quite useful, as you would be able to carefully remove the pages without ruining the book (in the off chance that you made an error while using the book and a page needed to by torn out; believe me, this happens to me a lot).

i've had these two papers for many years, and bought them at separate times, so i'm quite happy at how well they fit together. the rice paper for the pages is actually one of the earlier additions to my collection (having purchased them at a university store in new york about 10 years ago). at times it is quite useful having a hoard of art supplies!

wait...isn't teal a blue-green color?

i had visions of blue-green silk against cream and natural linen. and for once i made test samples before throwing the good yarn in the pot. i made bundles from the silk remnants of my last project, mixed up three mordants; aluminum acetate, tin/tartar, potassium aluminum sulfate, threw in the samples and let them soak for a day or so.

then, today, i mixed up a bit of the teal extract, which made the water a lovely turquoise, applied heat, and tossed in the silk samples. let them soak for an hour, checking every now and then, waiting to see the lovely blue-green develop on the silk. and waited. and waited. green bluish yes, teal, um not really. then, i finally removed them and watched the rinse water run away with the small bit of blue which had developed, leaving a bright green in its wake.

it is a lovely green, but when one wants blue-green, it's not really a happy accident. i had used the extract before on cotton, and the results were a lovely minty blue, exactly what i wanted. one thing i noticed though, is that were the strands came together in the middle of the bundle of silk there is a blue area. so, from this, i can suppose that the tighter areas of overlapping thread hold onto the blue molecules, which is why the cotton fabric is blue, but not the silk thread. another funny thing is that a piece of hemp cloth came out absolutely neon. so, not even the cellulose fibers all acted the same here. ah, the joy of dyeing!

just a peek...

...at what i've been up to. it's in the cushion genealogy. quite a bit larger than the pincushions. i'll post more photos when i've figured out a nice locale to shoot them in.