REALLY LATE HOMEWORK

 A year ago I was happily absorbed in an online class with Linda Monk and Carol McFee.  Please refer to my only public post (there was a wonderful disscussion forum with the class) for a little background and a feel for my obvious exhuberance.  Despite other projects that did get blogged, I never stopped working on my textured surfaces.  I spent happy studio hours until the day before I left for CA for the summer.  I regretted having to leave the work behind and also that Linda's and Carol's incredible book, Stitching the Textured Surface was not yet available.

Last fall I did get the book and downloaded the accompanying online class, a truly exceptional bonus, but have not had time to get back in the groove.  What I'm going to show are experimental samples.  The mediums and background treatments are recorded in a notebook.  It's the notes I was after to work on a mullti med  project for , yes, another class I'm presently taking, Kimono Collage with Jane LaFazio.  More about that in the next post.

You can see all of the samples with brief descriptions here on my Flickr site in the Textured Surfaces set.

RED CABBAGE CONFESSIONS

 I met DH to be in the Tuborg Brewery in Copenhagen where he rescued me from the unsolicited attentions of a Tunesian pilot.   What really made him my hero, though, was a footlong hot dog smothered with red cabbage!  He bought me all I could eat at a little stand in the Danish countryside.  He and his brother and I glutted ourselves and still revel in the memory of that simple treat.

Above are samples from my Quilt U dyeing class, using different mordants with a red cabbage brew.  I dyed linen, PFD muslin, cheesecloth, silk ribbon and perle floss, and in the middle right side there is rayon ribbon.

I have another half a cabbage in the fridge, and yesterday I purchased European style footlongs!  ;-)

I could not resist playing more with saffron.  I began soaking the samples above in the leftover saffron brew from earlier, but only got the palest hint of yellow, so I added a pinch of tumeric to kick it up.  Here I've got cheesecloth, muslin, linen, raw silk, silk ribbon, and cotton perle.

Here the blah results of my blueberry tests.  They are drabber and grayer than shown.

Okay, a couple more confessions.  Only starving university students are likely to order fried eggs with roasted potatoes and red cabbage -- had to have been a lunch special at a neighborhood Gasthaus.  My friend (come to think of it, she was one of my female cohorts in Copenhagen) and I were enjoying the meal when we noticed something blue on our plates.  Mold?  We sent the meals back to the kitchen , but after a few bites discovered more bluey purple splotches.  We complained again.  This time the cook came out and

mixed the red cabbage with the egg white.  We finished our blue eggs.  Mmmm.

I once tumped a full crockpot over in my car.  Clean up was laborious, messy and stinky.  I know you've already guess what was in the pot.  Yes, sweet and sour red cabbage!  BTW, I used to make it with red wine vinegar and currant jelly.

CORAL BELLS, GERANIUMS & RETURN OF THE FLAMINGO FLOOZY!

I am ecstatic!  Coral is one of my signature colors; I wear it well -- in moderation, more about that later -- and I love to use it in my art.  It was purely accidental that I came up with the coral of my dreams in a what-the-heck experiment.  I must credit my teacher, Marjie McWilliams, for encouraging us to be daring.  She virtually yanked me from my cowering corner double dog dared me to try whatever concoction I fancied.
In other words, clean out those kitchen cupboards and play! 
So I find a dust covered bottle of DeKuyper's Wild Strawberry Liqueur.  It's been hiding for 15, 20 years -- I remember why I even had it in the first place, but it's well aged now.  The color is pretty, so I try it out on a small piece of cotton.  After an hour it has an unappealing color, an unpretty amber.  What if I added a few drops of red food coloring?  Turns out the only liquid coloring I had was green.  What I did discover hiding further back in the same cabinet were jars of food coloring pastes from a cake decorating class I took a decade or so ago.  I kept adding small amounts of red paste until I thought I had a strong color.

It's not red;   the cotton is a pretty peach , but the silk ribbon is nice shade of brick or russety red, rather different than appears in the above picture or below.  I liked the ribbon color so much I decided to do a larger batch.  I pulled it from its wild strawberry bath after soaking half the time, and then came my Eureka moment and the yummiest coral shade ever! 

It is a shame the scanner isn't picking up the vividness of the color.  Oh, my feet are still happy dancing.  I have to wear coral sparingly, usually as an accent color.  Otherwise it is far too attention-getting, and I don't always want to stand out.  Let me put it this way.  I once wore a coral cape while walking down a San Francisco street.  I suddenly heard my name called out; a colleague from Kentucky who had no idea I was even in CA spotted me.  I have a lovely silk outfit of this same coral .  I only wore it once.  People stared, but I think it was because I looked more like the Mango character from Saturday Night Live -- only rotund.

Instead of feeling fabulously flambuoyant, I felt conspicuous.  Another occasion, another attitude, I could pull it off;  my alter ego could shine as the Flamingo Floozy.

Not every experiment gets me worked up.  Above are a couple of duds.  The top is beet juice; most of the color rinsed out, and rest disappeared with the mordant soaks.  The dirty yellow comes from doubled strength peppermint tea and the addition of dried mint.  I was hoping at least for a greenish yellow, and I'd so hoped for little tiny spreckles of darker color from the mint leaf flakes.

SPICING IT UP!

Lesson 2 with Marjie McMcWilliams at Quilt University, dyeing with spices and juices.  It took me a while to conduct all the tests I wanted because I only have 2 burners on my stove; however, since I was using saucepans instead of cups as I did with the tea dying, I was able to dye larger pieces of cotton and a yard or so of silk ribbon for each batch.  My results were well worth the patience.  I was thrilled with the silk ribbon, and I look forward to playing more in the future.  Not shown are the unsatisfactory outcomes of beet juice (from canned beets) and mint tea steeped with additional dried mint.  It's a shame the colors in these pix aren't as bright or appealing as actual fabrics.

Top to bottom:  chili powder; paprika; Goya Sazon, dry mustard

Top to bottom:  tumeric; curry; saffron 2, saffron 1

Grape Koolaid.  What's looking gray in the picture is actually lovely shades of purple.  With the silk ribbon left in the solution from 5 min to an hour  I got 3 values, pale lavender to deep purple.  The feather and eggshell got about 15 minutes.  The cover of my scanner crushed the egg shell, but it doesn't matter because I use the shells crushed anyway.  Note the cotton remained pink -- about the same I got with beet juice, but the latter wasn't very colorfast.

DYEING WITH TEAS AND SPICES

I am in Week Two of an online class at Quilt University.  It is "Dyeing with Tea and Spices" with Marjie McWilliams.  My kitchen has been converted into a laboratory, as I concoct dyeing solutions from various teas and mordants.  Except for the controlled experiments I've been conducting, I could be the mad scientist I always wanted to become.  DH is overwhelmed by the absence of countertops and sitdown meals.  He thinks I'm done because I've completed my initial tea experiments.  He has no clue that I've turned to spices, juices and other foodstuffs.  The showdown will come when I start cooking the red cabbage, one of his favorites and something I seldom make for him!  I'd best cook extra, I think.

Last week I worked with 11 teas and followed the protocols provided in the lessons.  I dyed strips of PFD cotton and small lengths of silk ribbon and ended up with 6 swatches for each tea.  The experiments involved length of soaking time , vinegar as mordant, alum as mordant.

 Before tossing the tea solutions I tried dyeing egg shells, feathers, coffee filters, rice paper plus one other exotic paper laced with twiggy fiber that really soaked up the color. 

 I also dabbed each tea onto a piece of watercolor paper to see how it would look as a wash or stain.  I've saved the tea bags; I want to try dampening them and pouncing them on paper to see what happens.  I did this once with coffee.

RUST IN PIECE & OTHER DYEING ARTS

I'd been intrigued with all the rust dyeing showing up on favorite blogs lately. It looked fun and seemed easy, but I didn't decide to try it until I saw one could capture images. I didn't think I had much rust around, but I remembered a set of seriously oxidized stack chairs with this great grid. I set out to see if I could capture the pattern. I got this ---->

I should have left it on the chair seat longer and should have pressed down to get those little verticle lines which work underneath the cross ones. But I could see the possibility was there.

I also found a few other experimental goodies. Here they are after washing clockwise from top left:

Cable chain link

Arm of stack chair (pink is accidental ink stain)

Mixed bag (box cutter blades, nails, steel wool)

Arm of stack chair (silk/poly cream charmeuse)

Mixed bag (reusing above items)

Stack chair seat

I experimented overdyeing the rust as well as rusting on previously dyed fabric. It works both ways, but my trials were done in haste and I don't have anything showy to display. Couple of swatches can be seen in another picture.

Since I was in the mood, I cleared time and space and went for a second dye session with Procion Mx dyes, trying 6 more colors: lapiz, teal, turquoise, dusty mauve, evergreen and marine. Like my first session I just wanted to see the dyes on different fabrics, and I followed a low immersion, marbly tone on tone technique.

L>R lapiz, teal, turquoise, dusty mauve, evergreen*, marine. Turns out the evergreen Procion was an acid dye and turned everything but the piece of silk chiffon I tried a light blue. The silk was a very pretty green. I intended to try some wool, but didn't get around to it. I did, however, experience some success with a 4 dye process. It was supposed to be 3, but I had so many uncolored areas I went back with a 4th dye and an eye dropper to saturate these places.

Top left is silk habotai, then 2 different pieces of linen, and below is a soft cotton. I did a few other trials like using leftover dyes and times and dutifully recorded everything in my dyer's journal. Below is a sample page and a picture of some other things I dyed including a piece of dotted swiss and a swatch of cream print cotton. Toward the bottom are a couple of from the overdye rust.

MUSTANG MOON

TAST 13: KNOTTED CRETAN STITCH

I try to explore new fabric techniques and surface treatments as I make these TAST samplers. I use a small format, no particular size, just random pieces , that gives me just enough space to do something with in a week's time. These are not intended as major projects, just mini samplers for study, so if something turns out not to my liking or an experiment fizzles, I haven't invested too much in time and materials. I mention this because as you look closely, you'll see I was so fabric frugal, I used the selvedge. I loved this dye batch from a couple of weeks ago, and there was no way I was going to sacrifice even part of the large pieces of quilters' cotton for the sake of experimentation in the name of fiber arts and science.

What you see here as the background is about a 4 x 4 inch scrap of buckram thrown in with the dyable melange. Now, were it not for Sharon B's class in stitch development, I would never ever have dreamed of trying to stitch on stiff ol' buckram. But you know what? After scouring and dyeing, it has substance without stiffness and is a pleasure to stitch. Meanwhile back in the lab, I played with Angelina fiber for the first time. I scrunched some pale aqua cheesecloth where I wanted to use the Angelina. I laid a few wisps under the gauze, and a little more on top. In manipulating the mesh, I thought I saw a horse, a spectre of one maybe... Ok, ok, dark fabric, must be night, need a moon... I once applied a flat back jewel like a shisha with cretan stitch. Could I do it again with knotted cretan? Reaching for an acrylic gem, I spy something shiny the same color. Already on my work table for another project is a package of equine confetti (it'd be horsey sequins, but there are no holes) I spotted among the party supplies for upcoming Derby. So what if they don't have holes, I'll bond them down with the Angelina! It worked, but I'd use less next time. I placed some violet tulle over (a local store that specializes in Derby hats sells 6 inch tulle in a myriad of colors, purchasable by the yard for 35 cents, or by the roll between $6 - $9; I splurged on 2 yard pieces of all my favorite hues), pinned it down and chain stitched the edges.

I opted not to add much detail to the big horse; I wanted to let the fabric suggest the form. I thought stitching over the mane and tail areas added enough definition. With a needle I coaxed a few strands of gauze out from under the netting. It's a time consuming effort, and would make allowances for this if I ever want little tufts peeking out. You should be able to see little wisps between the ears, here and there along the mane and tail. I added a few scattered beads to fill gaps in the night sky, and probably overdid those on the moonbeams. I added one more horse to the surface; it too is of a different color, but it matches the fuschia moon.

FINGER 1:NEEDLE 1

I have been so intrigued by the layering, needlefelting and machine embellished surfaces my fellow TAST-ers have been sharing, I had to jump in. Finally. I have a fair amount of colorful rovings, batts, tops and locks that I knew I would use someday. The rovings especially nag at me since I put them away after my first futile attempts and spindling, something I'd still like to learn.

I began with the piece that now forms the top portion of experiment 1. I used a foundation of fulled wool (camel color), overlayed some gauze I dyed with onion skins(peach or light rust), and placed whispers of burnt orange roving in two directions. Boldly I reached for my multiple-needle needlefelting tool and pounced. More
pounces. Imagine my disappointment when I realized the needles just weren't penetrating. :-( I decided they were too fine and reached for the two single needles that came with some starter roving. One needle at a time worked for me. I could add more roving, and was even able to needle down snippets of curly novelty yarn . This was exciting until despite all warnings and precautions , I let my attention slip and stabbed my finger. Vengeance was mine, however, as I broke the needle in my later exhuberance.

Next came a sandwich of natural burlap between two layers of peach cheesecloth/gauze/scrim/whatever. Even with a goodly amount of roving punched in it seemed bland, so I added some fuschia gauze from my newly begun home dyed stash. I small pieces of brandy silk crepe and some thought-I'd-never-use-it synthetic paisley meshy stuff in the unlikely combination of fuschia and oranges. Ohh, it punched in to lend some suble accents.
I did the same with the soon to be top portion. I decided the pieces should be joined at some point. I had these tacky faux pewter pony beads in a matte finish that somehow blended in with the grey yarns and #3 perle. I even had spacer beads to match. I added them more to get rid of them than anything else. And then I had those handdyed toothpicks... I tried to nudge out some of the burlap for variety in texture, and would definitely leave more exposed the next time.


Before I could even finish experiment 1 and started on 2. For this my background is heavy cotton velveteen in light purple. Ironically I bought about 5 yards of the stuff at a giveaway price the same time I bought that crazy paisley mesh (I guess technically it's a fine, loose knit nylon fabric). I hit up my fabric scrap tubs (those 40lb kitty litter tubs with lids!) and tossed on some cotton, silk, the paisley (as much as I could), some scrim and started working with my remaining needle.
Here's where I realized how a machine embellisher could really do the job! I wanted some more texture. See that
straw colored accent? It's from my collection of mesh produce bags. This happens to be constructed from a shiney
synthetic raffia, which had a tendency to disintegrate as I stabbed away with my needle. My sewing machine was already set up with a walking foot and set on zig zag (about as fancy as my machine gets). I made a few random passes to
secure the various layers and hopefully yield a little more textural interest. Just noticed, to the left you'll catch a glimpse of red. That's a bit of plastic netting from a bag of yellow onions. I neglected to mention that my raffia bag once held Yukon gold potatoes! Also forgot to say the stitching in Exp 1 is all crudely rendered up and down buttonhole stitch.

SUNCHASER

Sunchaser shoo's the Sun away from lands that need rain to places that can bask in its warmth and glory.

Sunchaser is a figment of my imagination, and this is how he evolved. I looking through a pile of cloth I had dyed. I selected this piece of buckram which had softened nicely after its dye bath. The slightly blotchy aqua was a result of my second experiment which was to mix some of the leftover dye baths from my primary dye attempt. I began by placing a blob of thread with trailings that I'd cut off the side of some muslin from the bright yellow batch. The gnarl was just the right shape and size for a focal point sun, so I stitched it down with barred chain, the spikes worked to create rays. At this point I fluffed the trailing threads and let them fall. The yellow trailing looked pleasing enough so I tacked it down. Here's the magic. It was as I worked the barred chain around the mini tangle, Sunchaser made his appearance!

I had no clue what to do with my obvious central theme, so I just began stitching the barred chains around the motif. I started with floss and tried to let it increase in brightness as I switched to #8 perle. After some pondering, my Sunchaser legend took root, so I realized I needed a dark and a light side and something more than the sun to suggest sky. Also in my recently dyed pile was some yarn, a synthetic that took several overnights to take on any color at all. I decided to try it for clouds. I began tacking it down with barred chain but I didn't like the look and figured I would cover it with something else, tiny seed beads maybe. I left it. I concealed the stitches, though, on the dark side with buttonhole stitch to begin the rain. I tucked in some cheesecloth from the same dye batch as the buckram. Though probably not visible, both fabrics have an occasional splash of yellow. On the dark side I ruched a piece of Frosty Rays (net tubing with metallic thread in the center) and used matching ribbon for French knots. I scattered a few in yellow on the other side.

From this point on I basically just used barred and alternating chains to fill space. For me this is not a tidy stitch. I believe it has a will of its own, and I was perfectly happy to just give in and let it have its way. I think it must take a stitcher of experience and determination to take charge.

DYEING TO EXPERIMENT

Clockwise from top left:

1. buckram

2. quilters muslin

3. cheesecloth

4. cheesecloth

5. rug canvas

My most recent experiment with Procion MX dyes.

In an earlier post I wrote about learning to use these dyes with the aid of the book, Color by Accident by Ann Johnston and the online tutorial "Fabric Dying 101". For this venture I layered different cottons in a tray. The pieces of muslin were much larger to they went in scrunched, likewise the cheesecloth/scrim. I activated my original 3 concentrates and poured them beginning with blue in the middle, yellow to the right, and fuschia left. Since it all seemed to be flowing together anyway I did not stir and just left it for several hours. I suspected the experiment might be better using a larger tray so that more pure color might remain, and I'll try that next time. I feared I might end up with the dreaded mud dyers warn about when mixings go awry, but I liked my results overall. Although deep, I like the combinations that picked up on the muslin and scrim; they are, more or less, apple green, robins egg blue and magenta. The cotton rug canvas I threw in unscoured at the last minute so it really just kind of floated on the top in the center of the tray is an interesting blend of indigo and aqua.

CROSSINGS

Here is the first of my TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge) samplers for the cross stitch, a simple stitch with many variations and seemingly infinite possibilities for combining and fracturing.

This very bright 18ct Aida is from my first dye session, the batch dyed with straight Procion MX bright yellow. Quite a contrast to the "yellows" below in my last post! Reminds me of lemon custard ice cream, a gone but never forgotten treat from my childhood. Normally I would eschew a color like this, which to my mind belongs on an Easter egg. I prefer my colors warm and on the muted side, but we are constantly challenged to leave our comfort zones. With this in mind I had purchased some Caron Watercolours #021 with bright yellow, hot pink, fuschia, etc, I thought would be interesting to play with, those shades being so far from my usual tastes. And, as serendipity would have it, it matched the yellow of my Aida. You see it in my sampler in the outer border and center stitches.

I have to digress just a bit more on this colorway. Since buying the thread I have observed similar color schemes and have found them visually appealing (I couldn't/wouldn't want to wear them, but...). Doing homework for Maria Peagler's graciously free online workshop Develop Your Personal Pallette, I went through magazines and was amazed at how many photographs with that colorway caught my eye. In particular was a National Geographic cover I kept going back to. I couldn't find reference to the issue online, but the picture showed two Oriental women with parasols walking along a collonade on large stone cobbles wet from rain. It was an amazing shot representing a symmetry and balance of softened tones of fuschia, coral, taupe, and National Geographic gold. It has a place of honor in my color journal with similar colorways from lava flows, beetles, and undersealife. Nature triumphs again. Oh, and on the cover of the Caron Collection Color Selection Guide? Indeed! The same colorway muted down to mauve, rose, color, orchid, lavendar and wheat. Need I mention the lettering on the cover is pretty much NGS gold.

Back to the sampler. Outermost border is satin stitched (think about it, half of a cross stitch), then long arm cross stitch in a variegated DMC floss, cross variations in bright pink rayon floss,

then Montegrin cross in a handpainted silk floss from Vicki Clayton. In the center rectangle top and bottom are rice stitches with variegated silk buttonhole from Victoria Brown at Ribbonsmyth. I broke up the two center rows, but the stitches are Smyrna and another version of rice stitch, wherein the four ends of the initial cross are crossed.

MELLOW YELLOW

Here is my first attempt at fabric dyeing. It is Procion MX golden yellow, which turned out more pumpkin than mellow yellow -- um, make that hues of winter squash! I am not complaining because I was tickled at how many shades I got with the different fiber contents. There is white muslin, 2

cts of Aida cloth, cashel linen, cheesecloth/scrim, sheer silk,

buckram, vintage lace and crocheted motifs (some of which were almost brown with age), cheap rayon trim and braid, rayon cord and scalloped ribbon, silk ribbon. I won't lack for Halloween embellishments!

I scoured all items beforehand and followed directions for low immersion dyeing from Ann Johnston's Color by Accident and "Fabric Dyeing 101", a wonderful tutorial and blog by Melissa.

In addition I mixed up batches of fuschia, intense blue and yellow, the basic colors that came with my starter kit from ProChem. All turned out well, and I was especially pleased with the mottling from my crumpled fabric. I stored my remaining concentrates, but didn't want to throw out the dye baths I had just used. I mixed some colors together with no measurements really. This was an experiment and the stuff I had on hand hadn't been scoured first. I was elated when I first took them from their dye baths, so bright and beautiful; alas, much of the color rinsed out, and there was additional fading as it dried. Still the results of these practice pieces was interesting. Yellow and blue (about half and half) yielded soft aqua and seagreen depending on fiber content. A dash of fuschia in the blue gave me from orchid to periwinkle.

As I write, I have about 4 lbs of Moda quilting muslin scouring in my washing machine. Tomorrow I will play again and try to do everything right. It also occurs to me that some of the less satisfactory pieces can be overdyed or painted or treated in myriad other ways to become useable. For my present purposes color fastness isn't an issue, although I do want to learn and practice proper techniques.