Spring is here!

Spring is here and now is the time to start digging out those old dye vats from last fall that have been hibernating in the basement. First up for this Springs Dye-In will be an Indigo Fermentation Vat. If you've never tried an indigo vat before now is a great time to do so! I'll be posting how to instructions along with video and more.
If you haven't checked out the Natural Surfaces Forum please do so http://naturaldyeing.ning.com/ We've been gaining members daily and natural dyeing discussions are picking up speed again now that the warmer temps have arrived

Studio Newsletter

Just catching up to let everyone know that I now have a newsletter once again. If you were a subscriber in the past you will have to sign up for the newsletter again as the previous subscriber's listed vanished into thin air.

The subscription box is in the right hand column.

DVD Link

Hi Everyone, thank you for your paitence I'm not sure why the other DVD link doesn't work, I'm hoping this link works for the DVD http://www.etsy.com/shop/prairiefibers

Mark Making with Nature DVD - Now in Stock!!!

Mark Making with Nature DVD - Now back in Stock!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/prairiefibers

By Surface Designer Kimberly Baxter Packwood
Over 2 hours of Video Instruction (5 Discs) & 53 Pages of Supplemental Instruction Included(PDF)
Everything you ever wanted to know to create unique cloth using natural dyes is covered in thisDVD Set, an excellent companion to the Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Technqiues Book.

Topics Covered Include:

• Compost Dyeing: Several methods of compost dyeing are demonstrated.
• Screen Printing with natural dyes, using thickeners and more.
• Bound Resists with natural dyes how to obtain rich layers of color on fabric. Monoprinting & Stamping with natural dyes.
• Create additional depth and design to your fabrics by stamping and printing them using natural dyes and pigments.
• Dye Painting with natural dyes using thickeners, gutta resists, and much much more. Pigments: using pigments with natural dyes to create additional character to your art cloth.
• Included is a 51 PDF booklet (this booklet is on a CDROM which you can then print out) that includes additional images and details on how to obtain gorgeous art cloth using natural dyes.

Dyeing Paper - One Approach

Size your paper with soy milk, let it dry/cure 12-24hours.  Then apply some pomegranate extract, or any natural dye extract, natural earth pigment, etc., to the surface of your paper.  Allow to dry.  Btw you CAN do this for paper pulp as well but this becomes a little trickier and is a bit on the advanced papermaking side of the spectrum.

You need to allow your paper to cure for 3-6 months, depending on the heat and humidity levels of your locale, BEFORE you rinse the excess dye off the surface of the paper.  Not exactly a quick project I know BUT the colors can be quite stunning.  I highly suggest working with papers of mixed fiber content, not just cotton rag.  Experiment with flax, hemp, silk, recycled sari, papers for your natural dye projects.

How to Dye with Pomegranate

This method is for dyeing fabric and fibers, I will create a post on  how to dye leather, rawhide, and paper next.

Materials List:
Pomegranate Peels - Fresh (about 16 oz) or Dried (8 oz more or less)
Stainless Steel Pot
Water - distilled if your water is hard or softened
Fabrics or Fibers that have been mordanted


NOTE: If you are working with fresh Pomegranates you do not need the pulp/seeds so feel free to eat that part of the fruit, you will only need the peels. 

Using a vessel large enough to cover your dyestuffs, fill your stainless steel pot with hot water and add your Pomegranted peels, allow to soak overnight.  Same method applies to both fresh and dried peels.

Next day return your pot to the heat source and simmer peels for one hour. 

Remove skins, if desired, from pot using a slotted spoon being careful NOT to burn yourself.  NOTE if you do not remove the skins they will leave random marks on your fabric and fibers, some dyers like this random patterning.

Add your WET, premordanted, fibers, yarns, threads, and/or fabrics to the dye pot.  If your dyestuffs are dry the coloring, on your dyestuffs, will be mottled.  To ensure even dyeing wet your dyestuffs thoroughly before adding them to the dye pot.

Simmer your dyestuffs for one hour, a low boil is fine with Pomegranate as it yeilds dull gold colors not reds.

Remove from heat source.

Allow the dyebath to cool overnight.  Next day remove your dyestuffs and drain, rinse either in the sink or in your washer, being careful not to felt any wool fibers you may have dyed.  Dry in the normal manner (line dry)

Dyeing with Pomegranates

You can dye fabric, fibers, and even leather with Pomegranates.  Pomegranate dye can be obtained by cooking down either fresh and/or dried Pomegranate skins, eat the pulp inside your fresh pomegranates. You can also dye with Pomegranate extract available from select retailers.

Sizing Paper with Soy Milk

Sizing Paper with Soy Milk

In Anticipation of Dyeing Paper with Natural Dyes.

Yes contrary to popular argument you CAN dye paper with natural dyes, the immersion method however doesn't work nearly as well as simply painting your papers with natural dyes. 

You will need to prep your sheets of paper with soy milk, as shown in the previous post, and allow to dry.  Soy milk acts as a sizing, or binder, for the dye and/or pigment molecules.  A single layer of soy milk is suffecient for painting your papers/fabrics.  You need to paint your papers/fabrics with your natural dyes and/or earth pigments within a realitively short period of time.  John Marshall suggests less than 2 weeks. If you live in a very dry and/or hot region I would suggest even sooner, and making test samples is very important with this process, make sure you take good notes. If you wait longer than two weeks all is not lost you can resize your paper/fabric with soy milk again, once it's dry you can proceed to paint your paper/fabric with the dyes and pigments of your choice.

NOTE: I use commercially prepared soy milk, natural undyed and unflavored and have had no bad experiences using commecially prepared soy milk. 

You can also make soy milk fresh by soaking your beans overnight in water, genearlly 4 cups water to 1 cups soybeans (yes ordinary field soy beans).  The beans will absorb most if not all of the water, if need be add an additionaly cup of water to the beans the next day. 

Take your soaked beans and grind in a blender or food processor.  You want to keep the liquid that comes off the ground beans, strain your ground beans preferably through a coffee filter or a panthose leg so that you don't have bits of bean floating around in the resulting liquid.  You now have soy milk. You can make more soy milk by adding more water to your ground beans and soaking them overnight again.  Repeat the straining processe the next day.

This soy milk should keep for about two weeks in the refridgerator.

Prepping Fabric with Soy Milk

Zine Update

I will update the Zine tomorrow, I was supposed to do so today, my pupils were dilated by the eye doc today and it's still difficult to read.

First up making soy milk binder (and an explanation of why it's NOT a mordant) and then dyeing handmade papers and the like with natural dyes!

Rust Removal - Direct Method

The baking soda paste has been sitting on the surface for several days and has dried.

Fabric washed, rinsed and dried - the view is the flip side, and turned 180 degrees, of the above image.  The fabric is much softer with little loss of color.  NOTE these fabric pieces had been dyed some 6 years ago and this may affect color retention. 

Direct Discharge Rust Update

I'll try to post pics later this evening but wanted to post an update.  The direct method is finished and has been washed, rinsed, and dried NOTE very little color left the area BUT the fabric is much softer which would make it easier to needle or sew with the machine.  There are gobs of holes as well on this particular piece, whereas before I applied the baking soda paste there were only hard crusty areas. 

The plan is to stabilize the fabric, just like the previous piece, and stitch as usual with my machine.  I will embellish the areas around the holes and take it from there.

Have a wonderful New Year Everyone!

More Rust Removal Notes

Ok I've recieved an email, thank you Connie, and the question is: "OK I tried your method but there's still rust on the surface"!  Now what?

Good question!  Here is a partial copy of my email reply:

Is it heavily crusted on the fabric? I left mine overnight in order to remove rust, it doesn't remove all of it, from the fabric, I should have clarified that in my orignal post. For the heavily crusted fabric I did the direct method and NOTE I ended up with holes where the baking soda really went to town, something else I forgot to mention that might happen - my bad!

Also water type may play a role in this, doesn't it always. What is your water's pH? Sometimes a little soda ash helps to get the pH closer to 7.5, which is what you will need to budge the rust off the surface.

AGAIN it may not remove ALL of the rust off the surface. My goal for removing rust from the fabrics surface wasn't so much to remove the color as it was to help those who had rather stiff fabrics, due to rust build up, so that they could stitch the fabric with ease.

I'll post pictures tomorrow of the rust removal direct method - I have lots of holes to share but my fabric is supple again, which makes stitching a joy.

Details

Final colors are added, time to finish the interior of this piece.

Details

Detail of machine stitching on rust dyed quiltlet.

Stitching Rust - One Option

Stablized rusted fabric, two layers (I know hard to believe) wool quilt batting, black cotton commercial backing fabric.

The quilt to the left was orginally as thick as the quilt sandwich to the right, heavy stitching reduced the piece to a very thin piece.

Already you can see how the heavy stitching will decrease the thickness of this piece.

I'm stitching the outer areas first with a dark rust colored thread, will come back in and fill the strata layers with two other colors of rust and ocher threads and finally will begin stitching the heavily rusted area in the center.  The reason for this approach is I don't want to have to change my needle, as the heavily rusted areas will dull the needle quickly, in order to finish stitching the outer areas once the center is finished.

I will fill the hole in the center, where the fabric rusted through, with decorative hand stitches and maybe some beads. 

Rusted Silk Carrier Rods

Rusted Silk Carrier Rods - stitched to Aquabond a water soulble stabilizer.

Detail 1

Detail 2 - I used a leather needle and heavy cotton threads to machine stitch the constructed cloth layer.

Detail 3 - some areas of the silk carrier rods were exceptionally stiff, I simply left as is on the surface.

Rusted Tea Bags

Above - Tea Bag Fronts

Below - Tea Bag Backs

Rusted Cotton Tea Bags - these were in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors, page 67, as was my recipe for dyeing with rust, but I was never given credit for any of this even though I asked repeatedly for credit to be given.

I love the rust dyed indigo bags the best out of this collection.

The patterning on the front sides of the back is very different than the patterning on the back of the bags, though they were rusted with the same exact objects.

Art Cloth

Cotton fabric that has been screen printed, monoprinted, dye painted with natural dyes and then rust dyed.  Approximately 28x28 inches.

Sewing Rusted Fabrics - The Fabric Rusted Through Now What???

My fabrics have rusted through now what?  Can I still use my fabrics? 

The anwser is yes you can still use your fabrics, with a little help from a quilters best friend iron on stablizer!

A small tid bit of rusted fabric that once lived in the fabric in the preceeding photo.

Heavily rusted areas that glisten, this glistening is due to the iron oxide deposits on the surface of the fibers.

A view of the area I will be working with, complete with a hole that has rusted completely through the surface.

Mistyfuse TM stabilizer, I pressed my top fabric first and then sandwiched the Mistyfuse TM between the top fabric and a piece of soft cotton fabric, as I will be using a wool batting and another backing fabric.  Needling is imporant for this piece hence the reason I chose to use the flannel. Cotton scrim is also suitable for this project.

The stabilizer and backing fabric are now adhered to the front fabric.

Here you can see the stabilzer and the backing fabric peaking through the hole of the rusted fabric, click on photo for larger detail shot.

Full view of the fabric after the backing fabric and stablilzer are put in place, I am now ready to make my quilt sandwich as usual and begin stitching.