Tag: fabric dyeing

Before and After

In the past week, three friends have given me fabric and linens.  I’ve received wool, barkcloth, commercial linens, and handmade lace.  Am I excited?  Oh, yes!  As I dig deeper in the boxes, I discover more and more treasures.

Some of these treasures have been swimming in the walnut bucket.  I even strained the old walnuts out to make a cleaner bath for them.  

These are the same walnuts I collected in the fall.  I put them in a bucket of water, let them ferment a while, then dipped some treasures.  I wrote about the first ones here.  

That mixture sat through the winter months.  Yesterday, Jim helped me pour the mixture through a bit of cheesecloth to see what months of stewing would do to the dye.  I photographed the results in pairs…before and after.

I love the texture of barkcloth. Both pieces you see here are nice, but the darker one seems more interesting to me.
Bits of an old petticoat white, then darker. I love tucks….and I’ll remove some of the stitching later. It acts as a resist to the dye.
This tatting is gorgeous in its original state, but the darker color really enriches it. The top row in the image is the color all of it was before dyeing.

I had hoped to dye some of the tatting black.  I love this coffee shade I got, but the next step is to dip some in an iron water bath to make it darker.  I have nails sitting in water now.

Maybe my favorite fabric to come out of the dye was this bit of damask. I love how the dye increases the contrast in the woven design. Yes, more of this fabric is soaking in walnut dye now!
A couple of oval doilies before and after a walnut swim.

In December, our friend Paul was visiting and told me he had bought some hats to wear to work.  But they were white.  VERY white.  He wondered if there was some way he could get them darker.  I said, “I happen to have some walnuts in a bucket of water outside if you want to try that.”  He was willing to let me dip his hat.  Here are the results.  Paul was happy. 

I guess you noticed most all these brown beauties were posing on an indigo dyed linen tablecloth….I can’t wait to stitch some of this blue and brown together!

Garden Dance

Tawanda made an appearance in my last post.  I referred to her as my outdoor spirit doll.   Now she’s an element of an art quilt.  

We’ve been sheltering in place now for several weeks with no antiquing adventures to replenish my stash.  But, oh, how my collection has grown.

Since friends are at home, they’ve been cleaning closets and drawers and I’m reaping the rewards. One day the mailman brought a box from Alabama.  Susan had sent a box of tea towels, doilies, and dresser scarves her grandmother had passed along to her.  She kept the one she and her daughters would use, but sent others to me.  

This hankie’s image looks like the clematis blooming on our fence.

A friend is moving to another city and won’t be taking everything she has acquired over the years. She thought I could use a collection of women’s hankies. Oh, yes, indeed, I can.

This pile of blue from the fabric samples made my heart skip a few beats.

And Helen had a box of discarded drapery and upholstery samples.  Silk, linen, cotton, and wool.  Yes, wool.  I was amazed, too.  Lovely, lightweight, sheer wool.  I can’t wait to see how that behaves in the dye pot.

More drapery samples sorted by color…inspiration for a red quilt, I think.

And Joyce, a new friend who was at the last guild where I lectured has a box waiting for me filled with beautiful linens.  She no longer quilts, having moved on to a new focus in sewing, but has acquired beautiful pieces.  Once Joyce’s friends saw that she could give new life to their linens stored away in hiding, they shared with her.  “More than I can use in my lifetime,” she says.  So she is sharing with me.  Now that’s something to look forward to when this stay home order is lifted – a drive to collect that box!

Garden Dance celebrates Tawanda’s exuberance with Spring and all the treasures I described.  I sketched her image, transferred it to fabric, then collaged bits of embroidery from one of those silk samples I mentioned, vintage crochet, some recycled denim clothing.  A few buttons, and a lot of hand stitching brought it all together.  That pop of color at the top right is a piece of trim I bought in Paducah one year.  It was a dusty bolt of unused drapery trim, stained and hopeless looking – and containing some polyester, I’m sure.  But for some reason it spoke to me; maybe the many, many yards of something for little money.  But it loves new color.  I’ve painted some of it and the bit you see here has taken a dive in the indigo dye pot.

Tawanda is a sculpture made of rebar and cement and she’s nearly 20 years old.  She was one of those purchases that I thought, “I shouldn’t spend this much money on yard art, but I really want to take her home with me.”  She was at a local garden center and I think I saw her dancing there on a couple of visits before I succombed to her charms.

As is often the case, I used an old quilt remnant as the base for this collage. Notice the patch some previous owner had made – I was thrilled that I found a place to include it.

She has brought a smile to my face on countless days over these years and I’ve never regretted that expenditure. It seemed it was time to memorialize her in a quilt.

Her name, Tawanda, comes from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.  if you are familiar with the characters in that production, you understand.

The quilt finishes at 12″ x 16″. Here you see the label attached to the “front” of the old quilt which is now the backside of Garden Dance. The faded homespun backing is one of my oft-used vintage backgrounds. I wonder if the woman who made this scrappy quilt years and years ago would approve of my use of her work. If she was a Tawanda herself, I think she would say, “You go, girl!”

Loving the Blues

indigo fabricsI’ve been playing in my indigo vat for the past few days.  The pile you see here includes some of the results.  I’ve dipped pieces large and small of old vintage sheets, old hankies and napkins, doilies, placemats, purchased commercial fabric, bits of lace, and a cotton Matelasse bedspread.

Fabrics are cotton, linen, silk, and combinations of those.  Some have been dipped once, some several times.  I love to watch the magic as the oxidation process occurs.

indigo vatWhen first removed from the vat, the cloth appears green.  As the dye oxidizes, the blue appears.  If a resist is applied to block the dye absorption, interesting patterns can be created.

The only resists I’ve tried are some tying of the fabric and a bit of folding.  Already I can see how addictive this process can be.  And though I’ve already peered into the rabbit hole of staining with tea and blackberries, and then explored the browns, this lover of all things BLUE is tumbling headfirst into the indigo dye.

indigo stitchingThis third photo shows that I’ve started some projects using this most delightful fabric.  I’m loving the work I’ve recently been doing with vintage linen; it’s so deliciously soft to stitch by hand.  The photo shows a vintage baby dress appliquéd on linen now ready to embroider and quilt and some squares prepared for piecing.  Both pieces use techniques I’ve learned from that amazing artist, Jude Hill.  Her invisible basting stitch and paperless piecing technique have changed my stitching forever!

I haven’t limited myself to playing with yardage.  If I took a selfie right now, you would see a cotton knit shirt and a silk scarf which have both spent some time in the indigo vat.

Never Say Never or Dye

prewashing fabricsToday I find myself doing two things I thought I wasn’t doing anymore.  Prewashing fabric, and dyeing fabric.

Once upon a time, I prewashed all my commercial quilt fabric.  I loved seeing the colors up close at the ironing board, I found myself reshuffling fabrics to make new groupings as they hung on a rack to dry, and I planned all kinds of projects during that stage of the process.  Lately, though, I’ve enjoyed piecing with the crisp fabrics as they came home from the store.  And, I enjoyed having the time spent sewing rather than washing and ironing.  I do only buy quilt shop quality fabrics and haven’t had a problem with colors bleeding.  Well, I have had one problem red fabric, but it was a top quality brand, and it had been prewashed.  So, there is that.

I’ve lately bought some vintage linens that were heavily starched and I didn’t want the bugs to attack.  Recently I’ve been doing a lot of hand stitching, exploring more of Jude Hill’s techniques, and like touching the soft rumpled linen and cotton in that process.  I wanted to use some Irish linen handkerchiefs I recently bought which had never been used (I removed the Rich’s label before throwing them in the washer) and wanted to be sure the creases were not yet holes.

mb wool with snailAnd, last week I stitched the wool piece you see here from a Maggie Bonanomi pattern.  I was anxious to work up another one of her pieces, and grabbed a piece of silk matka for the background of the next piece.  To complete the load, I added a few pieces of Japanese woven fabrics I had bought in Paducah.  They needed softening a bit, too.

Maybe dyeing isn’t the right word to describe the process you see in the bowl.  Staining might be more like it.  Some of the fabrics I’ve been working with lately are a bit too WHITE for my taste.  And, I had this set of blue linen napkins that I’ve been working with and wondered what I could do to give them some visual interest.  Yes, the weave is nice.  The color is nice.  It’s just a bit flat.  And, I admit to being spoiled by using hand-dyed fabrics; I’ve gotten accustomed to their subtle variations.  blackberry dyeingSo, I had some blackberries we weren’t eating as fast as we should, I boiled them with some water in the microwave, and added some fabrics.  If you think you see bits of berries in the bowl, you are right.  I’m hoping for a mottled effect.

I love hand-dyed fabrics.  I’ve said that before.  But I don’t like the chemical nature of synthetic dyes and the equipment needed to dye my own fabric.  However, I have recently embraced watercolors on fabric and like to alter the color a bit myself.  So, natural recoloring might be something I can do with rust and berries and nuts and dirt.  Think of it as a country girl’s approach to hand-dyes.

Stay tuned for the outcome.