Recovering

I spent Wednesday recovering from Tuesday. I purchased a promotional show case on etsy then realized I didn’t have anything to show case. So I spent Tuesday cropping images, listing, and was up until 2am.

I did get the first dye in on four yards of fabric – organic cotton voile  (Hart Fabric) and sateen (Silk Road), and silk habotai (Dharma Trading Co.).

I have in mind a line of  voile T-shirts, with a silk lined, sateen tank top underneath. Something for the green crowd to wear on special occasions.

This is the fabric after shibori, one dye, and handpainting.

Maybe I was tired, but everything that can go wrong with the first dye did. I did a shibori circle wrap on the voile. The circles came out squared off. I dyed all three pieces at one time, chocolate brown. Or so I thought. Used a dip dye method and soaked the fabric in a soda ash solution beforehand. The voile came out a strange shade of grey. I didn’t panic. Unexpected colors are the exciting part of shibori. 

I did panic when the sateen came out a color that for lack of a better term I will call rust, and the silk was bright orange. Something way wrong with the dye method. Won’t use it again.

I kept going. I wanted to see how the “circles” would work with a handpainted swirl motif I’ve been using in  different variations and  mediums.

This is the fabric after painting metallic swirls with Lumiere. I can tell this is going to be a problem to photograph.

Next I laid out a grid.  The swirls are random, we all know that random is anything but. Repetition holds most patterns together. I used a blue violet dye, thickened with sodium alginate and added baking soda.

(Use a blender to mix the thickner. Let it sit for at least 24 hours before adding dye and soda. Then blend again using an emersion blender or hand whisk.)

I started to like the voile.

I use a bamboo steamer to set fabric. I’ve been working with a lot of silk lately and forgot how much larger cotton is when wrapped for steaming. Of course, my wrapped fabric didn’t fit and I wound up using a metal steamer with several layers of paper toweling between my wrapped fabric and the steamer.

Did I fall asleep? I don’t know. But I do know that I removed a soggy mess from the steamer. The paper towel was beautiful. My voile fabric was now gray, the unknown shade of rust, turquiose blue in some spots and a very muted shade of violet in others.

Still it looked interesting. So I hand painted the center of the “circles” with a copper colored metallic Lumiere paint.

This is the cotton sateen, including grid lines and brush bristles.

Finished, I realized this was not the piece I intended, but one I like anyway. Now the question is will this fabric in any way, shape or fashion coordinate with the sateen. The lining will definitely have to be redyed. Even I refuse to put an orange lining in a rust and purple garment.

What do you think? Tomorrow the finished cotton sateen.