Yes, indeed, Silk black in fact, Pro-Chem’s #610.
My favourite for silk cloth. Drop a little in a wet sink and look at all those colours! Add a bit more water and the colours merge into a rich black and all its various shades of gray, and best of all, they don’t split – no halos, no spotting, and no tell-tale under tones. Just black. This is specially important when I am over-dyeing a resisted item like the one below and I want a no nonsense black background.
All this cloth I have collected this year... these were made to test colour relationships, resists etc. They sit, piling up and they languish on top of my dryer.
I feel the need to put them to use, perhaps cut them up and have them work together somehow. This green one below involved several processes to achieve the texture and layers of colour. Maybe I won't cut it up so much.
This is a multi-colour silk screen process. I have tons of this stuff, so I will cut away with little fear.
Here is more of the green. I really love this piece. It reminds me of a Canadian garden at this time of the year - full of promise.
Ah, my dot cloth. This swatch makes me want to go back to the silk screen and dye pots to make more of this in different colour combos.
See you all later...
Lately I have been involved in producing a gazillion silk and cotton swatches using all manner of dyestuffs. That and fabric paint, as well as discharge agents etc. I thought I knew a LOT about this stuff - not the case.
Just take this intense blue above. When it is over dyed with complements like strong orange (left swatch) or burnt orange (middle swatch) I see with 'the whites of my eyes' that the blue indeed does NOT discharge when stamped with discharge paste.
But then, I always knew that... what I didn't know was how gorgeous the blue is when peering out from beneath these complementary mixes.
Another swatch with an elastic resist. This one shows what happens when burnt orange is over dyed with mixing blue. The diagonal lines are discharged - this blue discharges.
Another elastic resist swatch showing what happens when intense blue is over dyed with grape then discharged. The discharge takes where there is only grape.
Here is what happens when sun yellow is overdyed with grape. Love the brown. 
More swatches...these are silk habotai.
Oh my, it has been a long time.
The time has come to get back in the saddle and post again.
This past year I decided to undertake the Artcloth Mastery program offered by Jane Dunnewold in San Antonio, Texas. The program is wonderful, demanding (I have several assignments that are due). I have been learning a lot from a great teacher and my fellow art cloth companions.
Here is a shot of the Art Cloth Studio in San Antonio. It occupies the entire third floor of an old mission church and is therefore huge.
Here Jane is setting up a class meeting
Discharged silk fresh out of the dryer with someone's respirator.
Black rayon discharged with 1) chlorine - coppery area 2) RIT colour remover (sodium hypochlorite) white cloudy area and 3) discharge paste (Rongalit) - grey stamped area at top. All three agents affect the cloth in very different and interesting ways. More to come later.
Here is a peek at the stuff that currently moves from my wall to my table and back to my wall again. The top piece is finally quilted. It was designed with every shade of red that I could find in my stash. I must be anticipating a long, cold and colourless winter...
I have concluded that I don't have enough shades of red and I need to make more - a good project at this time.
This second piece was made with some hemp that I wanted hand dye.
It dyes OK, but doesn't hold a candle to pima cotton or silk broadcloth.
I joined it with a piece of burnt orange pima that I silk screened with a couple of motifs. It is now ready for quilting. I feel that this one will need about as much thread as the red one above.
I find that this is a great way to create a shibori resist for dyed fabric.
And here is the result.
Not too bad. Next time I plan on using use a heavier thread to produce a bolder outline.
It is ironic how it took me most of the Summer to set this spot up and run it efficiently, and here we are at the end of August. Soon, I will have to shut it down for the winter.
I can only count on a few more days of super warm temperatures - such as this for surface design to really cook.
Maybe if I am really lucky, this September might offer a couple of warm days, but the warm humid nights for curing are already gone.
Above, is a shot looking to the West with the pot belly stove - it currently serves as a drying rack for rubber gloves. On the North wall below, I have added one more shelf to the ones that were already there. This gives me an 8 foot work bench. I found a microwave at Zellers for $49. so it has a place of honour next to the bench.
The table that came with the shack is too small, so I have the padded work surface propped up on plastic storage bins as a temporary measure.
I have discovered that everything needs to be in sealed containers as there are a lot of lively little creatures roaming around at night looking for anything that looks like a nest. In the mornings, I am usually greeted with a bevy of spiders in mid construction mode.
These chairs take up too much room so I hung them on the wall. They make great 'occasional shelves' until someone comes to visit:-)
Now here is the beauty of this place, this piece was left like this uncovered overnight and was still damp in the morning - perfect!
Oh, a word about how I get water down here...here's how -
Here is my sink. This old picnic table has a new lease on life.
and here is the French drain I built with my own two hands. I got this idea from Marian Reid who offers marvelous posts on the Dyerslist. I dug a two-foot hole that leans away from the shack and filled it with three bags of gravel - I embellished it with a necklace of stones from the cliff. It is both beautiful and practical - thanks Marian!
These are yogurt cups with freshly mixed dye sitting in sodium alginate that will need a stir before dye painting. Below is a piece waiting to be placed on my new drying rack.
Here is my drying rack. I bought this at Zellers (same day as the microwave) also for $49. I thought I would need to build something expensive or elaborate. This wall came with its own racks, eight in total, and only needed to be bolted to the wall. I use eight insulation foam pieces 24'' x 48'', each to stretch the fabric - they are light weight and wipe down easily.
Not glamorous but these three dedicated electrical lines (got them for my birthday back in July) are what keep this place humming: the fridge, the microwave and all sorts of heating plates and irons.
Cool eh? Cool for real though, pretty soon.
A sample of stitched resist done in San Antonio.
Here is what's on my front burner these days
1) Group show: Seven Threads Studios at the Britannia Gallery in Ottawa, ON - 1 -31 May, 2007
2) Open House Studio Tour as part of the Thousand Islands Arts (TIA) group, also in May
3) Fibre Art Retreat organized by the Seven Threads Studios at the Glen House Resort in the Thousand Islands, 20-22 April, 2007
Yikes!
Back in my dye lab, here is a shot of my new work surface.
A 4'x 6'piece of plywood, covered on both sides with polyester felt, stapled and duck taped around all four sides. This allows both sides to be used, and the top slides easily across its two supports - the sink counter edge and an old microwave cabinet on the other side that just happens to be the right height.
Even though this is a small space, I still have access to both sinks when needed.
N.B. I Still haven't painted the room yellow yet. black stain on door still there from my dye spill a while back.
I covered the felt with with poly cotton sheeting as it doesn'tbond well with dye but absorbs wet under the art work (plastic would cause puddling). The sheeting gets tossed into the wash regularly. This large surface allows me to work with larger pieces of wet cloth when stamping, silk screening, stencilling, or foiling, etc. - is much more efficient than what I had previously.
It can also be removed and stored vertically when I want it out of the way.
Small sample showing two dye baths, wrapped, scrunched, stamped, and thermofaxed.
Below is a larger piece 60"x 72" just out of its first bath. This is a 2 yard piece from a bolt of Hathaway shirting. The Hathaway Factory in Prescott ON was closed Christmas week three years ago putting 140 people out of work. I was lucky enough to come across a 100 metre bolt of 60" light blue shirting. I would have preferred white, but the light blue is almost as good. It has a satiny shine to one side and loves all kinds of MX dyes. More of this panel to come.
I am just back from a week at Jane Dunnewold's studio in San Antonio. I have always held a fascination for the process as I love to muck around with dyes and paints in the studio. Prior to this workshop I had not really taken a hard look at Art Cloth other than drooling over images on the web.
Last week I was able to see first hand and up close how a simple length of cloth can be transformed into a work of art. I am now hooked.
These images show a couple of samples I made while there. As you can see I managed to layer as many techniques onto these two bits as I could possibly cram in. Each piece includes at least two dye baths, discharging, thermofax transfering and silk screening with fabric paints; oh, and and a bit of foil in the mix. Instead of yielding mud, the panels seem to glow.
I am now back in the studio making stamps with erasers and have a couple of yards in the dye bucket. A cup of coffee, NPR (or CBC...smile) a #11 exacto and a box of Dick Blick erasers spells heaven for me these days. Below is an image of a couple of eraser stamps on newsprint.
It is the part I like best.
Brand new stash for the new year, 120 metres freshly ironed -
BTW, this circa 1940 GE iron did all these lengths. It cost me $10 at a garage sale. It does not have any steamholes (great for fusing), is very heavy and very hot. Given its age, it may go at anytime, so I scan for these when I can and when I find one or two, I scoop them up.
I am in my lab thinking that I am so smart, so well organized, there are all my concentrates lined up , and ready to go. Fabric is scoured, labeled, and piled consecutively, ready to be dyed.
Measuring tools are at the ready...all is well.
Suddenly, all hell breaks loose.
A 3 quart bottle of black dye concentrate bumps into me, falls to the floor and splats everywhere. This is not black dye, but black dye CONCENTRATE. Everything in the lab is contaminated with black.
A moment of silence (aka contemplation) a deep breath, and on to mopping, mopping and more mopping...The door to the garage will need repainting. Somehow white enamel paint absorbs dye concentrate permanently.
Ugh! What a mess....
I am looking for a silver lining...so I have decided to repaint the laundry room walls a rich golden yellow.
This will NOT happen again:-)
I need a bigger room...
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