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.