transfer prints with disperse dyes

While I was in Quincy last weekend, Ann and I had a play date making these:



These are regular paper that we painted on using thickened disperse dyes. After the paper is dry, you place it upside down on a polyester fabric and iron it until the dye transfers to the cloth.



Not the best picture, but it shows the paper being pulled off the cloth. The color in the paper isn't exactly what you get on the cloth. Here's a better look at a print:



The colors are quite bright, but not real intense in this piece--I think I need a hotter iron. And for some reason, both Ann and I are having some problems getting the blues to print--takes a long time and a lot of heat. I used some black dye that I thus far have been unable to transfer.

Here's another look at a print and the paper that made it:



One of the nice things about this method is that you can get multiple prints from each paper--maybe 9 or 10. Each will usually be a little lighter than the previous one. They do not change the hand of the fabric at all. The only downside is the whole manmade fiber thing, but even that isn't so bad.

Here's a small 'sketch' I made with one of the prints:



In person, it's pretty cool--a little shiny which makes it hard to photograph, but very nice.

That is all.

contrast and progress

This is a close up of the shibori'd piece after quilting (I have taken to thinking of quilting as a middle step rather than an ending one). It's kind of a sun/osage orange image. But it didn't quite stand out like I wanted it to. So out came the discharge paste.

Here's the initial result:



Better, but not quite there. I've toned the circle a little with some dye sticks. That picture will come later when the piece is done.

Meantime, I'm taking an abstract art class, learning lots of techniques. One of our projects is to make a piece using the process of an artist. I chose Helen Frankenthaler, because I was intrigued by the fact that she poured paint on unprimed canvas--not that different a process than putting dye on regular fabric. Here is the beginning of my piece:



I also used one of her ideas of starting with the composition of a classical painting--mine is by Van Gogh. The puddling and process of having to move the piece while wet is causing it to stray some from that original notion, but I like where it's going so far. I could see doing this with fabric to make whole cloth pieces. But I can also see that it is something that I should only do outside--it is very messy. But fun. And that's part of the point of doing it,right?

That is all.

manipulation and inspiration

It's a gray, warm autumn day here. So it's kind of hard to take a detail picture, but then that's not really what I was after. I wanted to show some of the inspiration for the piece I've been talking about. This is shot looking west from my driveway.

We here in west central Illinois tend to have dreary autumns. It hasn't even rained much here lately (we're in a drought), but we have all these long, darkish, gray days. As the leaves fall off the trees, the only ones left are those are the oaks, which turn a rusty brown that in the height of autumn seems dull, but now that it is the only color left, it seems warm and cozy. So the spots of orange and brown pop out against the gray of the tree trunks and branches. That's what I'm trying to capture.

And I am quilting away on it, between the chores and errands and etc. of life. It's fairly densely quilted so far, that may change as I move across the piece. I just hope I have enough thread to do the whole thing, and avoid my usual problem of running out of a color 4/5 of the way through a piece. Planning ahead is not my strong suit in art.

And there are still bits of a dull acid green about, small trees that haven't given up for the year, the duckweed floating in a pond. So I may find a way to work bits of that color in, maybe some hand stitching. In any event, this is a major piece for me both in time it's taking, in size, and in what it's taught me about where I want to go next.

manipulation continued

I started quilting on the gray piece I blogged about a few days ago. The colors remind me of late autumn in my area, when most of the leaves are off the trees, the weather is gray and rainy, but there's a spot of bright color left here and there. So the quilting lines are mimicking tree bark of large trees, with small trees behind.

But now that the quilting is started, and after a walk past the golf course where I saw bald cypress trees turned rust colored reflected in gray water, I realized that I had been looking at the piece upside down.



It just looks right this way. The light spots become reflections of sky on water, the rust the leaves still on the trees. I know it's a very abstract version of what I see that no one else might be able to identify. But that's the way I work. I struggle to compose and design without an inspiration to guide me--I need that to guide me. Even if you don't see it in the final product, I do.

Maybe that's a result of my Midwestern, practical upbringing, that idea that art has to be about something. I am drawn to the abstract expressionists, and drawn to the idea that I want to make art about where I live. So I'm forming a new series, one called Hancock County. I realize that the last couple of pieces I've made are probably in the series. It's about what I see in my everyday life here, the view out the car window at 55 miles per hour. (It's easy to abstract that blurry view). I'll go back and put labels on the pieces I think belong. And when this one is done (I haven't quilted a piece this large in a while...wow), there'll be more coming.

manipulation of the medium

I continue to exploit my materials for all they're worth. Once again I tried the soda ash/vinegar silk dyeing thing, this time using a black dye. Silk and Procion MX black dye don't work as planned--this version of black dye comes out as blue, grey, or orange. So I expected some variation from that. Doing strips of soda ash alternating with vinegar increased the variation--this time I can see the stripes formed, although they are subtle.

Just to mix things up, I put a piece of a silk curtain material I had picked up from a clearance bin underneath (and coated it with soda ash), the piece of silk, and then a layer of plain cotton cheesecloth on top (also treated with soda ash). All of this was on top of a garbage bag on my picnic table. Next I poured on a not very concentrated solution of the black dye. And rolled the whole thing up and left it sit for a day before washing it out.

There is no picture of just the cloth, but here it is with the beginnings of a design:



What I can't quite figure out is how just one corner got to be mostly rust colored. Serendipity I guess. This piece is quite large for me--around 25" tall by something like 75" long. I like the horizontal format. I think it reminds me of the woods in November--lots of greys, with a touch of color here and there where the leaves are still on a tree.

The other pieces are here are the other two pieces I dyed at the same time--the strips are the curtain silk, which came out really cool. The amorphous piece is the cheesecloth, which I stretched and deformed by pulling it about:



That's where the piece is at the moment. I think it will be heavily quilted, but I'm not sure whether anything else will be added. It's quite serene at the moment, I like that.

recovery, redux

The recovered piece continues to evolve. It has been hanging on my design wall off and on for the past few days, and it just didn't feel right. Maybe it's the image of a human figure I keep imposing on it. Maybe it's the technical difficulty of putting the pieces together. Maybe it's the top piece that I don't like as much as the other pieces.

So today I tried simplifying it to this:


It would be my intent to sew the pieces together so there would be no gaps as show in this snapshot. It has an oriental feel to it, and is much simpler and calmer than the previous variation.

So do I wait another week to see if this the right way? So sew it together and move on with my art? I vacillate even as I type this. Maybe tomorrow I'll decide....or put it off...

And of course this leaves me with three other pieces to play with. I really like the thin long strips that formed the arms...could they be stand alone pieces? I could see them hanging on a narrow wall...art for problem spaces...