Waiting on Spring

"Despite the forecast, live like it's spring."

Lilly Pulitzer

This tiny little sprout will eventually become part of a scarf similar to the one below if we all hang on a bit longer.

Spotted knapweed and arrowleaf balsamroot on silk crepe de chine

 

Flower of the Month

 "Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith."

Margaret Shepard

Pincushion flower leaves on paper with copper mordant. 

Watering the Grass

 "The grass is  not always greener on the other side of the fence. The grass is greenest where it is watered."

Robert Fulghum

This could be either Old Witch Grass or Purple Love Grass. The plant ID app can't seem to decide. The scientific names for either are not in my copy of Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest or Northwest Weeds, so both the app and I could be on the wrong track. At any rate the common names are charming and it is an interesting element in the paper samples especially. As always, the fabric sample will hang with me over the next year and have an occasional bath, just to see what happens.

Watering the grass in our climate change fueled summer is pretty much a pointless endeavor, you can get brown grass without wasting a bunch of water and time. Mr. Man and I will be discussing its replacement this winter. Right now I am watering flower beds in order to weed them and put them to rest for winter, not to mention trying to keep my dye and print plants alive until they can go to sleep on their own. In poking around I found this crazy grass tuft that looks like a fiber optic lamp from the 80's. If it holds on fabric, it could be an interesting connecting element between leaf prints. It looks like Mr. Man and I will be having another chat about what is a weed and what is an art supply. 

Peeling Onions Part ll

 "Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins."

Johnny Rich, The Human Script

This is onion skin with no pre mordant laid out on silk dupioni. After laying out the onionskins and folding the fabric in thirds the long way, I put rusted nails about every 5 inches or so and then rolled the silk up jelly roll style. Then it was steamed for an hour and allowed to cool off. You can let it set longer for darker colors, but you run the risk of the rust "burning" the fabric. Everywhere the nails interact with onionskins, you end up with black stripes; almost an animal print!

Once the above procedure is done you can then dip the fabric in iron water-no heat applied in this case. It starts to change from orange to browns, greens and grays almost immediately, so keep an eye on it. I think this sample was about 30 minutes or so. You can either rinse it out at that point or let it dry on its own, keeping in mind it will continue to darken. Also remember that wet fabric appears about two shades darker than it will when it dries, so just gage from that how dark you want it to get.

Side by side-the tiger print and the jungle it lives in!

If you would like to see a real world application of this technique visit my page at the Pottery Place Plus Online Store.

Peeling Onions Part I

 "Life is an onion-you peel it year by year and sometimes weep."

Carl Sandburg 

We grow a lot of onions! We grow Candy Sweets as they are not readily available in stores and are really good. The dye material they are wrapped in is a bonus! We also grow a few red onions.

Just lay them out on the silk and roll them up. With no other plant material you end up with a kind of marbled effect. I used scraps of silk dupioni for these samples.

This with no mordant.

This is with an alum mordant.

This is red onion skin with an alum mordant. Love the shots of green!

Iron pot as a pre mordant, I filled the pot with water and a small touch of vinegar, heated it to boiling, shut off the heat, let it cool for an hour and then added the piece of silk. I let it soak for several hours. Then I rolled up the onionskins and steamed.

Here they are all laid out side by side. Normally I would just be adding crumbled onionskins around leaves, but I thought this was a good way to show different mordants and eventually I will use the fabric for various projects. The next post will show the effect of rusty objects as a co-mordant.

You can find my handmade supplies in my Etsy shop and scarves in the Pottery Place Plus online store.

Experiments on Paper

 "When a path opens up before us that leads we know not where, don't be afraid to follow it. Our lives are meant to be mysterious journeys, unfolding one step at a time. Often we follow a path worn smooth by the many and in doing so we lose our authenticity, our individuality, our own unique expression. Do not be afraid to lose your way. Out of chaos, clarity will eventually rise. Out of not knowing, something new and unknown will ultimately come. Do not order things too swiftly. Wait and the miracle will appear."

Ann Mortifee

This is a print from the leaves of the pincushion flower. Left to right; watercolor paper soaked in iron water, watercolor paper soaked in alum, and the third is watercolor paper soaked in copper-love the red! If you click on the picture and look closely, you might also see the creepy little face at the top of that print! The first two were steamed in a stack of paper that I alternated the paper soaked in iron water with the paper soaked in alum, so the leaf in between was affected by both. In the case of the alum paper the print is a more golden yellow. Normally with just alum by itself it would be a bright lemon yellow-both nice, but it is good to have options!

Huckleberries

"The time has come to reweave the future with different threads."

Yaakov Jerome Garb

I added some huckleberries to the mix after I had laid out the leaves. The post alum rinse described in the next two pictures will change the reddish color to a purply-blue. Post rinses will also change the colors of other plant materials as well, so expect some yellows and greens to appear.

This is what the scarves looked like after steaming. I allowed the rolls to sit until almost dry. The reddish color will not last on its own for very long, so a post alum rinse is in order. About a teaspoon of alum dissolved in a cup of warm water and then added to about a gallon and half of cool water is enough for two scarves. Submerge the scarves, let soak for several minutes, then remove, gently squeeze out excess water and hang to dry out of direct sunlight. After they are dry, wash in cold water by hand with a bit of shampoo and again, hang to dry out of direct sunlight.

I did these one at a time so I would be able to take a comparison picture. So the bottom is before the alum rinse and the top is after.

January

"January,

The first month of the year,

A perfect time to start all over again,

Changing energies and deserting old moods,

New Beginnings, new attitudes."

Charmaine J. Forde

I had planned to turn these tank tops into shopping bags by sewing the bottoms shut-but now I may wear them! 

Working on fabric for some landscapes I am making. I ran out of long pieces so I just threw in a little a bit and that, rolled them up and hauled them out to my stove-only slipped on the ice once!

This is what I mean by a little of this and that; cracked leaves out of the miscellaneous leaves box, St. John's Wort flowers, and whatever dried tree catkins were left in that box. I love the freedom in making random pieces of fabric, I lose that urge to "design" and learn so much from the serendipity of it. I also sometimes end up with pieces I can't make myself cut into, so I have learned to make lots of them! 

This is a piece of cotton canvas from a session a few days ago. I had "abused" it in several different ways (coffee dye after rusted nails and I can't remember what else) so I was really surprised that the onion skins (that would be the mass across the top of the picture) printed green. I figured they might end up almost black.

New Weed

And no, I am not trying to increase my SEO (search engine optimization) with that title-although it did cross my mind. Any-hoo, I thought I would show you my results using Watson's Willowherb.

This is what it looks like, sorry it is not the greatest picture, by the time I decided to try the plant it was at the end of its season. Those long curly things are the seed pods.

I decided to throw it in a stack of paper. I was alternating sheets soaked in iron with sheets soaked in alum. I do like the burgundy red with the mint green and I was really excited to see the wispy seed pods printed too.

Of course, I had to see what would happen on fabric so I went scrounging around in the weediest garden border on the north side of the yard and lucked out-there was some hiding behind the sour cherry tree! Since it worked really well with the iron/alum combo on paper I decided to do the same with fabric. This is silk crepe de chine pretreated with alum using an iron blanket.

And this is the iron blanket! I was so surprised this printed so well.

Be sure to check out my Etsy shop, there are lots of new things and I have been restocking the old. 

Surprises

"Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."

Samuel Johnson

As it turns out, the gingko leaf actually does discharge, that is, bleach out color. I had 3 "bummer" scarves hanging around (as in, I opened up the roll and went "Bummer!") So I decided to give this technique a go. Although I would be the first to admit this is probably the worst example ever created, I am so jazzed that anything happened at all! Also beware of internet photos-this looks way better here than in real life; but it makes me want to run around dyeing fabric just to do it again and again-practice makes perfect! Or better than this anyway.

I will fiddle with it some more after The Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour (do you like how I worked that in?). This Saturday September 28th, I will be at stop number 3, Jill Smith's studio, come see me! 10-5 rain or shine.

Green

"It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water."

Barbara Kingsolver

Sunflower and Filbert on silk crepe de chine

Maple and Virginia creeper with tansy dye and iron bath on silk crepe de chine.

Remember to check out my Etsy Shop, Facebook, and Instagram

Pink

"Pink makes me feel both young and old. There is no in between." 

Anthony T. Hincks

Big Leaf Maple on the forest floor 

Classroom samples with a madder root blanket, the other pot is with an iron blanket

Pink madder and lime green walnut

You can catch up with Drye Goods Studio on Facebook and Instagram and I am putting new things in my Etsy Shop almost every day!

Green Season

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others'  opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

Steve Jobs

Arrowleaf Balsamroot.

Geranium, arrowleaf balsamroot, and knapweed.

Cooking away!

Gnarly looking.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot print.

Knapweed print.

Results of Early Spring's Stew Pot

The eucalyptus I bought the last time had buds on it, I love the little marks it made!

The coral color is spiral eucalyptus and the little green leaf is a perennial geranium, known in my world as "stinky geranium" as the gardening catalogs describe its scent as lemony. Sorry-smells like moth balls to me. 

More stinky geranium. Nice prints though.

Results of the Steamer Pot Picture

I posted this picture on Drye Goods Studio Facebook page the other day and it got some attention along with people asking to see results because of the foil liner. It functions as a barrier, but in a small way as a mordant blanket. I have done this before and have gotten zingier colors, but maybe that was because I was using fresh plant material, this was all done with dry leaves.

So here you go:

Vine Maple, the yellow is the "ghost" from the top of the leaf, the darker print is from the underside or veined side.

A side by side comparison of oak with and with foil barriers. The one on the left is without; the prints are a brown/plum and the background has more "noise" in it. The one on the right is a different shade of brown and the background is cleaner.

Acer Rubrum 

Dogwood

Not sure about the yellow and brown as a color combo, I may do something else with them while staring out the window watching the snow pile up.

Winter Fun

Sometimes you just need to take something one step further, for whatever reason. Winter is a great time for eco printers to catch up on stuff like that. You may have things set aside that didn't turn out all that great, or are not what you expected. It could also be that while something is a perfectly acceptable piece of fabric, it isn't the color that you need at the moment.

I picked these two pieces to do over. The one on the left is silk charmeuse, and while a nice print, there isn't enough contrast between it and the other things I would like to go with it. The one on the right is an experiment with only the green leaves of Poinsettia. In this picture it looks a lot better than it does in real life. It came out very pale and then there are the hinky black spots.

You have some options; you could mix up some sort of dye and over dye the whole thing, or you could just eco print over what you already did-sometimes those turn out fantastic, or you can expose it to another mordant or adjunct. In this case I am using the iron pot as the post mordant or adjunct. I wanted the charmeuse piece to be darker, more gray and in the case of the yellow nightmare-anything has to be better than that, so into the iron pot they went. First I filled this cast iron dutch oven with water and a splash of vinegar and brought that to a boil and then hauled it back inside to cool off. I was afraid if I left out on the gas stove to cool I would forget it and it would freeze solid in this lovely polar vortex we are having. Once the water was tepid I dumped in both pieces of fabric. Then I went off to do something else, but I set the timer on my phone for about 15 minutes so I would remember to go back, give the fabric a stir and check to see what was happening. 

The first time around there wasn't much going on but as the afternoon progressed both pieces got darker. I was really hoping the yellow one would turn green as it sometimes does with this treatment, but as you will see in the pictures below, it came out kind of gray. There isn't an exact procedure for this process, when you think it is dark enough, take it out. Remember that wet fabric appears about two shades darker than when it is dry, so take that into consideration. Depending on the plant material, it is possible to turn something totally black, so if that isn't what you are after-check it often.

This is the one that was yellow. I like it and may leave it that way, but I could eco print on top of it. I may just let it sit around a bit to ponder if it is done or not.

This is the charmeuse piece, the background is grayed out and some of the leaf prints are more defined.

If you are wondering why I took the second set of pictures against a canvas background it is because I had a bear of a time getting the colors right in the photos. I let the phone update last night-and no Samsung, I am not at all happy with the updates to the camera!! It was very difficult to get true color, especially with the shiny charmeuse, so about the only way to get you to see what I see (and not have to troop out into the aforementioned polar vortex to take pictures) was to lay both pieces against the white, it must make the camera "see" differently or something. No amount of messing around with the settings would fix it. Anyway, the background came out a lovely blue-gray and will look great with the other two pieces of fabric I am using.