Finished silk scarves

I found a little time here and there over the weekend to finish up all the silk scarves. I can't tell you how happy I am with them! The colours are so luminous, translucent. Very pretty.

Using the Shiva paintstiks proved to be interesting, as silk is somewhat wiggly and squiggly, not wanting to stay put. It made doing the rubbings challenging, but well worth the effort. For most of the scarves I kept the colours in the same or analogous colour family (some were highlighted with a little sparkle,too) so that the effect was more 'emergent' than stamped or printed on top.

It would be hard to pick a favorite out of these!

The grape colour to the left is actually a rich plum in real life, and for some reason I can't get it to photograph well.

All 12 scarves, done.

Back to quilting!

Cheers,

Lisa

Kool silk

Working on the assumption that wool and silk are both protein fibres, I tried the same methods that I tried last month for sock yarns on the remaining silk scarves....success!

The photo does NOT do the colours justice. There is almost no natural light around here these days, certainly not powerful enough to get a decent photograph. These colours are beautiful Kool-Aid bright and lustrous.

The only thing I did differently from the sock yarn was to use a much larger bowl and more water so that I could agitate things with a wooden spoon in between zaps in the microwave. That and pre-dampening the scarves helped to give lovely, even colour. Next stop, Shiva Paintstiks! I have it in my head that they would look wonderful with an allover rubbing design of some kind, in lustrous colours...

I dyed all those scarves (7 in all) while making dinner last night. Can't beat that for multitasking.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

silk saga...finished. (for now)

Managed to finish the scarves yesterday....

I overdyed that soft yellow one with the red, but was disappointed that the yellow doesn't look yellow on the completed silk. I wonder if the Presist took out the Dye-na-Flow. The funny thing is, that salt that I thought was doing sweet-twiddle-all really did work! That's where the lovely bits of yellow show through! Sorry it doesn't show in the pics.

The purple one looks verrrry purple, not so blue as in the photo at right. The zippy-zappy one came out wonderfully fall/Hallowe'en-ish.

My fave though, has got to be the blue with flowers. It's closest to my long time favorite silk scarf that I've worn for years. Dad gave it to me a really, really long time ago, and it's been a wardrobe staple every fall and winter for at least 12 years now. The colours have stayed strong, but the silk is finally deteriorating after years of daily knotting and unknotting.

I think if I were to do this on a large scale, I'd get into using acid dyes. The Dye-na-Flow is a good 'gateway drug', but it's not doing it for me the way I thought it would....it's a little granular when used heavily. I want those wonderful clear luminescent colours unencumbered by sediment that only come from immersion dying. Don't get me wrong, this has been fun...and until it seems the right time to make a major investment I'll certainly do this again. I'd like to try it using stamps with the Presist, or getting some kind of thickener for the Dye-na-flow so that I can stamp with it. I may yet get those Shiva Paintsticks out for use here, too. Who knows. The sky is the limit (as usual...how come there are so many things to try, so few hours to do it in?)!

Lisa

the continuing silk saga...

Not a great photo, I'm afraid. My camera batteries frapped out when I went to take some pics...something I've not had to think about with this new camera (it's a Canon and I love it). So, batteries are charging as I write and I'll update more later.

As you can see with the newer scarves I've used much heavier colour. I hardly diluted anything! I'm hoping that the colours will be more intense, but not dull the way they are right now. I'm looking forward to that wonderful silk luminescence. See the salt on the red one? It's not doing a lick of good. I waited too long, the Dye-na-Flow was too dry...but too wet for me to get the darn salt off again. I haven't used salt since my watercolour days, but thought I'd try it after a comment left on one of the previous entries. I'll give it another go with something a little more wet, later in the game.

Back to stitching while the paint is drying!

Lisa

If this is an illness...

I don't want to get better.

:)

Lisa

P.S.
Thanks for all the generous hearted comments on the 'blogaversary'. You girls rock!

L

What I do in the wee hours...

I knit. Late at night, some time in August, the urge strikes. And I knit socks. I really, really love knitting socks. I love the tiny gauge, the lovely wool. My thoughtful Mom brought me this book a few months ago...and it may well replace all the other sock patterns I use! It's a really thorough, all knitting level book on socks. Charlene Schurch has written charts for all gauges and sizes, and has a 'class sock' lesson in the beginning in which you can learn the ropes of shaping by knitting a small sock.

My most recent pair here are the first ones I've ever knit with a textured stitch...I'm usually a 'let the yarn do all the work' type girl, using self striping and other fun yarns. After seeing how stripey yarns knit up with chevrons in the book, I just had to try it. Now I'm hooked on the idea of knitted lace. Darn. One more thing to try to make time for!

Just a note on the wool I'm using...it's 100% wool treated with Aloe. It is the single nicest wool I've ever knit with (aside from 'way back as a kid when I didn't get all the lanolin out of the fleece and was knitting homespun). This wool was so gentle on my hands! I'll be buying more of it, once I can remember what it's called.(*later edit* It's Austermann Step Sock Wool - check it out)

The other thing I've been playing with a little here and there is painting silk. I ordered some Presist from Dharma Trading Company, and this is my first run around the block with it.

I put some of the Presist ( a water based resist formula) in a squeeze bottle and doodled around, then painted with diluted Dye-na-Flow. You can see here that the Presist is a warm coffee colour (it really reminded me of molasses!). I've got some ideas for how I can be a bit more controlled with it on the next round, but this worked really well for a first try.

The two photos here are after heat setting (with the iron...paper towels on BOTH sides of the silk for that) and after the first wash, before drying.

The Presist came out completely, without any difficulty. - when I wanted it to, too. Not before.

Below is a photo of the finished, dry and heat set silk. The colours were not as intense as I'd hoped, but now I know I need to try one without diluting the Dye-na-Flow and see what happens.

Becuase there was some leftover diluted yellow, I immersion dyed another piece of silk which I hope to now Presist and over dye (well, paint, actually. Presist won't stand up to immersion dying. It's water based and would all come out).

The best part about the silk painting is that I can do it in 10 minute spurts, here and there. It didn't take a whole 10 minutes to apply the Presist in the first place, may have taken 10 minutes the next day to paint the silk, a bit more than 10 minutes much later the same day to heat set the dye, a quick spin in the washing machine (while I was quilting), then a final press. This is my kind of craft.

So next on the agenda?

Presist some more silk so that I can let it sit and dry while I"m quilting.

Can't beat that.


Hope you're happy stitching,

Lisa

Centre converged

Here are the strips cut and re-sorted for the next stitching marathon...it's so important to keep them in the right order. I have a little heart attack every time I try to move one from the cutting table to the machine so that they're ready to stitch...
I do love how these fabrics look together.
There. The centre portion is done.
Now I need to dye some fabric for the accent border. How did I forget I have to do that?!@!?

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Convergence begins...

As I mentioned in a previous post, part of the reason for making the dyed fabric over the past few days has been to make a super sized convergence quilt.

This is the original layout, working with 40" squares.
It's really nice to have the big machine and lots of space for layout - this quilt is made of a whole bunch of really big pieces that I want to keep in order. You can see here all the strips cut and placed in order (and my helper, Blackie):
This is the quilt top once all the pieces have been put back together the first time. Next step is to cut up the top again and put it back together one more time...
So far I like the way it's working out. The size is reasonably within what I expected, but this next cut and stitch part will let me know if my math skills are still worth anything.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Yardage done!

The weather was perfect! I'm glad I did this earlier, because it's getting cloudy out there now.


I did another 2 pieces, both 1 1/2 M in length. These were done the same way as the ones from yesterday (wet-in-wet, on plastic, watered down Dye-Na-Flow, dropped on the fabric from a paintbrush, ferns placed on top of the wrinkly fabric).

Today's batch was really successful technique-wise - I'm really happy with the colour separation in the fabric, and with the sunprinting. I didn't know that the different colours would react differently under the ferns (there are two detail shots included here that you can click on for a larger version)...in some cases it looks like the fabric was underdyed in one colour, then overdyed and sunprinted with another...not so! All the colours were applied in one go (from lightest to darkest), and all left out in the sun at the same time.

Cool. I love happy accidents!


The sickly yellow colour was inspired by the look of the ferns on the red fabric yesterday...I loved the colour tension between the insipid green and the red...and tried to get that colour in the 'cool' fabric today.

Soooo...the final colours are one red, one orange, one greenish-blue, one purple-y blue.

I've done a couple of different runs at the math part, and think I'm ready to cut into this fabric now.


After I finish the quilt that's on the machine.

Happy stitching!

Lisa

Short update:

The weather just would not co-operate with me yesterday. I ended up with surprise results due to sudden storm to the South completely blocking out the sun (no sunpainting effects) and then a little bit of sprinkling rain while I was downstairs in the studio (scattered dots), much lighter colour than expected due to things getting a little too diluted by the rain. Luckily, I still like the fabric!

Life in the mountains is always somewhat unpredictable, weather wise.



Today looks a little clearer, so I'll try to do the cool colour pieces today.

Back to quilting!

Lisa

Uh Oh....

My new Dye-na-flow paint came from the Dharma Trading Co! This is a very dangerous situation, as evidenced by the photos...

I've painted (wet in wet) 3 M of bleached muslin today and have already prewashed some of the silk I ordered to play with!

This is actually two 1 1/2M pieces of fabric with a chromatic gradation. I'll be doing another set of pieces in cool colours as I'm putting together a super sized Convergence Quilt in the next few weeks and wanted to try doing it with hand-dyed fabrics first, then with print fabrics. Part of the reason for the first quilt is to work out some math questions I have about how this will go, and I wanted to use 'renewable resource' fabric instead of purchased fabric until I get the kinks worked out. Also, this way I get to learn more about what kinds of things I can do with this dye/paint.

These pieces are done by first wetting and wringing them out, then placing them on plastic. I don't have a big enough table to lay them out flat, so I crunch them up a little. The goal is to make peaks and valleys, rather than folds. I want light and dye to hit a lot of the fabric, not to have TOO many big whitish patches left over.

I do dilute the dye-na-flow somewhat. Never a good measurer, I eyeball this (no surprise there, eh Mom?). Once the paint is diluted, I drop it on from a big brush, lightest colour first. Usually I'll mix in a colour that doesn't totally belong - just for interest's sake, but today I was very restrained.

The leftover diluted dye was poured on in both cases, then scrabbled - that's the technical term - around on the plastic until the other colour just starts to blend with it.

It's not nearly bright enough today for the fabric to sunprint properly, so I have removed the bits of bracken that were scattered over it. I like sunprinting the uneven surface. It gives such lovely unexpected bits of shadow here and there.

I'll let you know how these come out. Promise.

Off to buy more muslin!

Lisa