Saturday, July 04, 2009

Happy Day!!

Hope you're having a great July 4th! I'm taking a day off from the dyeing and am kicking back to do some knitting and beading.

Over the past two weeks I've been trying out some new (to me) techniques with soy wax. After attending Jane Dunnewold's "Soy Wax Three Ways" demo in Kansas City, I came home enthused and inspired to dye some yardage using stencils that I cut from plastic. Here is a portion of my first endeavor:


This is 3 yards of a lovely silk linen blend. I waxed it, dyed it yellow, let it batch, washed it out, waxed it again, dyed it scarlet, batched it, washed it, waxed it (sounds like a car, doesn't it?), and dyed it with a bronze-ish hue. After completing this piece, I thought how silly I was to do all of that washing between waxing and dyeing. So I consulted my guru (Jane) and she suggested that results might be different and that I do a comparison study. Since I had another two yards of the same fabric, I decided to give it a try, but using a different stencil. Here's what I got:

Totally different, isn't it! So, I think it depends on what result you are wanting, which method you should use. The washing between layers certainly does mellow things out.....but it is labor intensive!

Here are the two pieces together:


I finally got around to foiling some of the scarves that I dyed last week:

I prepared a new Thermofax screen and got the results above with the foil. I liked the screen so much that I added textile paint to a round robin t-shirt that had arrived on my doorstep earlier in the week:


It kind of reminds me of fireworks, which makes it very appropo for today!

Enjoy your holiday, if you are celebrating, or just enjoy your day!

PEACE

6 comments:

Gerrie said...

Love that thermofax screen!! Your soy wax experiments are interesting. Thanks for doing them for me. I want to come and sit in your condo tonight and watch fireworks!!

Jeannie said...

Gerrie can have the condo, I'd like to sit in the pool all day! I love the screen and thanks for sharing all of your experiments. The scarves are beautiful. Have a wonderful day! Cheers.

Eva said...

As an impatient person, I'd probably prefer the stencil method. But also the more laborious technique seems to have its right. I looks multi-dimensional and somehow more in harmony. Nice to see the results. And the gold on turquoise looks very oriental and lush.

Diana Parkes said...

Judy, your fabric lengths look great. I can understand your comment about washing inbetween applications. I must confess I do this all the time with my 'art' pieces as it gives me a better appreciation of where the piece is going and it is easier to work out the next application. As you say it is very time consuming but worth it I feel to get a satisfying end result. I may not always do this though when doing yardage for garments which have a slightly different approach.

Carol said...

Happy 4th of July Judy, it's already the 5th here, sunny, crisp and a beautiful day. Your silk is beautiful and I like your stencils. Love to Barker XX

Joyce said...

It's so interesting to see the different results attained by using the same materials but different methods. Amazing.