After Dyeing

Here's a photo of my first attempt to quilt first, dye later. It's also the result, as I indicated in my last post, of my first attempt to use Procion MX dyes in a grown-up and responsible way.

This is the completed quilt, with binding but before dyeing:


And this is after dyeing:


This little quilt has been a series of experiments for me in stitching, dyeing and alternate binding and while some of the results I got were excellent, others were not and will require more practice and study- labors of love, for me.

I used 4 dye colors: (MX 004) lemon yellow in the center, (035) hot pink extending out from that to create orange, (028) bright scarlet towards the outside edges blending with the hot pink, and finally (050) deep purple on the binding itself.

The colors are vibrant and distinct, but I'll admit I didn't expect to split the dyes quite so obviously. Coming from a painting background, blending color has always been SOP for me but as I'm learning, each dye color strikes the fabric very differently from the other colors and don't blend exactly as I expect them to. Live and learn. This is one area where I know I won't instantly achieve beautiful results- only practice and experience will win this race. I think it would be a good idea for me to look into a local, live fabric dyeing class, too.

The best part of this quilt is the binding, I think. I love the slightly grungy, frayed look it has, and most of the fabrics used to construct it show the purple dye nicely, despite it having mixed somewhat with the yellow dye in the low immersion process.

The cotton thread, as expected, absorbed the dyes nicely. The stitching would be a good opportunity to experiment with using some threads that cannot be dyed by Procion MX. I'll try that in a future piece.

I learned a LOT from the process and it was fun, which means I'll be more likely to keep working on it it until I've got the process learned.

This quilt may have no future... I could wind up using it as a background for more painting/stitching/beading, or I may just leave it as is, a kind of dyeing sampler that can help me correct mistakes in the future.

One fun bonus was the pile of colorful tissue I wound up with after mopping up the work area with plain white 2-ply paper towels.


These pretty little things may get fused to muslin for later stitching.

This week my goals are ambitious... I want to get away from the sewing machine for a little while and get back into the studio, so I plan to do some painting. I found two great children's books that I'd like to start altering, so that will take up a few joyful days of splashing paint and glue around and digging through my scraps of paper and fabrics for collage.

Later in the week, however, I'd like to revisit textiles again and RIT dye some cotton batting I bought last week for that purpose. I'm looking forward to taking over my kitchen for a couple of hours of color-mixing fun!

Two Art Quilts In Progress

In the last two weeks, I've made significant progress on two small art quilts I've been working on.

The first quilt is based on an excellent online, on-demand class by artist Terry Stegmiller. The class is called Creative Art Quilting Techniques: Fused & Painted Backgrounds and is very inspiring.

This photograph shows the finished background piece with it's binding.

Without going into explicit detail out of respect for Ms. Stegmiller's clever techniques (go buy the PDF, you won't be sorry), I can say that this piece contains multiple layers of various weights of cotton, nylon and chiffon fabrics in neutral tones, machine pieced with the edges left raw. I even stitched in a drier sheet- I love the sheer texture of the fibers.

The binding was done with a length of decorative elastic I stumbled across in a "grab bag" a few months ago. It was tricky to work with and didn't want to go on too straight, but I'm still happy with the result.

The foreground of this piece is likely to be a photo taken in my back yard of one of my many wild critter visitors, printed on a sheer piece of chiffon... that's what I envision, anyway; sometimes a piece will want to take me in another direction altogether, and I try to pay attention to those impulses.

The second piece I'm working on is inspired by the book, Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art: Colour, Texture and Distortion, by textile artist C. June Barnes.

This piece is machine pieced, something I only just (joyfully) learned to do. I used torn strips of various cotton fabrics in whites and beiges, including some soft felt from an old flannel sheet and some heavy painter's canvas, stitching each of them in turn with heavy white cotton thread to a quilt sandwich of batting and Timtex . The idea behind this quilt has always been that it would be low-immersion dyed in Procion MX fiber-reactive dyes, so everything visible on the quilt is dyeable.

Each strip of fabric contains some new (for me) free motion machine stitch patterns, some of which I like better than others. It's sort of a sampler of stitches I'm comfortable attempting right now. Should be fun to look back at this piece in ten or twenty years and see how far I've come.

The binding was a bit of an experiment. I used scraps of white and off-white fabrics and stitched them to the back of the quilt. Then I pulled them forward and stitched them to the front, leaving the edges of each scrap raw.

It makes for an interesting look, especially when the piece is laundered, which was the next thing I did to it, in preperation for dyeing it.

After gentle laundering, I soaked the quilt in soda ash and decided on the dye colors I wanted to use. The quilt soaked for about 30 minutes and then I ran it through a spin cycle in the washing machine and hung it to dry outside.

Impatient as always (and really hoping I don't pay too dearly for it), I took the piece off the line before it was totally dry and ironed some of the larger wrinkles out of it. Then I applied my dyes, although the fabric was still a little damp.

It's batching in the garage right now... can't wait to see what I wake up to in the morning! :D

I will post photos of each piece as it is completed. In the meantime, some photos for summer inspiration...

This is my way of saying hello!

I'm spoiled rotten. I am surrounded by an awesome studio filled with everything imaginable for creating art of all types, from quilts to canvases to fine papers. My studio has been described by family and friends as "the local craft store" and I cannot deny the truth in that- I love paints, dyes, gadgets, paper, fabric and all the million other little bits and pieces that go into hand-crafting beautiful objects.

But I want more, always more. More bookcases. Better storage. Less clutter. More indirect sunlight. Better overhead lighting. Less visual noise. More counter space. Better access to a sink. Less stuff sitting around waiting to be worked on.

Ah ha, I know!! The answer must be to get a larger studio. Of course! I could spend several thousand dollars and finally remodel my garage so I can move into there- THAT has plenty of space! But it doesn't have enough of other the things I need (after all, that's why I moved my studio out of there more than a year ago and appropriated an entire spare bedroom to serve as my new studio), so of course I have to address that... no sink, not enough lighting, incorrect storage- all fixable if I throw more money at it, right?

Oh and naturally, if I'm going to the trouble of remodeling, I can't then just share the space with my husband anymore, I'll need all of it to give me the room I so crave today- so he'll have to go. Where? I dunno, maybe I'll get him a shed. Yeah, he'll like that, a nice manly shed at the far end of the yard (out of sight, naturally- they're so ugly) to store his tools and mulch and whatever else he likes.

A contractor could handle a job like this, right? Pour a little concrete slab, build a shed on it... while he's at it, he could knock a hole or ten in the garage walls so I can have windows. And then maybe install a window A/C unit for the worst of the summer months, ... O O O and maybe built-in cabinetry would be nice... Yes! Because I need MORE. Bet I could accomplish it for the bargain basement price of 10,000$ or so...

Even in this economy, I kid you not- this insanely appealing idea has now been circling around in my brain for 4 months .

And then about three days ago, as I was standing in the middle of my tiny studio floor looking around and grumbling about how unsatisfied I was with the space, a quiet, kindly voice spoke up from somewhere inside my head.

"Get rid of it," the voice told me. But I was distracted, stubbornly cataloging everything wrong with the room that I would surely fix the next time around. I ignored the advice.

"Get rid of ALL of it," this time the voice was louder and more emphatic. It might have even sounded like my mother. And it was impossible to ignore a second time.

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?" I actually asked the question out loud.

"This is My Art (reverent emphasis, please)," I insisted. "I can't just get rid of it! Look, there are my stacks of hand-dyed fabrics. I LOVE those! And over here is all the paper I've painted for the last 8 years, I need every scrap of it in case I suddenly want to do something in, I dunno, yellow! AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE WITHOUT MY CLOSET FULL OF FIBERS??"

The voice was silent, patient, knowing... and I was indignant. Absolutely scandalized. At the annoying art nazi voice in my head. The one that sounded (quietly and kindly) like Mom.

"You don't have to throw it out," the voice finally reasoned, "You could just put it away somewhere."

I wanted to stomp my foot and I almost did.

But then it suddenly struck me that the voice was right- I could put some of it away. Ok, so the voice demanded that I put it all away, but that's just crazytalk; I still need to work! But I could remove the visual noise, the physical clutter and the stacks of unfinished projects. I could increase my space without spending a dime- I just had to be willing to let go of some of the "preciousness" I was beginning to attribute to nearly every item in my cramped and cluttered studio.

I've made excellent strides in that direction in the last few days. I think I can bring my studio back around to a space I love and am inspired by, rather than the one I close the door on and shrink away from because the clutter has captured and silenced my muse.

The garage studio idea is still a good one. But if it's that good today, it will be that good two years from now, or three... when the economy stabilizes and things aren't so scary out there anymore.

So this is me... greedy artist, craving explosions of color and hours that vanish into textured, layered, glorious art. I quilt, I paint, I carve, I photograph and I see art everywhere I look. Welcome to my blog!

- Judi Hurwitt
Approachable Art