Results of Dye–er, WAX day

It took a week’s worth of newspaper to get the wax mostly out of the fabrics, and there were only 4 small pieces of fabric. I also did a hot water rinse in a bucket before I ironed. I won’t do that again…it makes a real mess and I don’t think I’m going to bother scraping wax off the bucket–it’s a goner! Unless someone has a better suggestion, I’ll be saving my newspapers and doing a lot more ironing.

Here are the results of the soy wax experiments:

Blobby wax = blobby image

First try with the fern tjap–still pretty blobby!

But I love how it turned out on this piece of fabric…less wax = better image

Using the stencil–usable but not what I intended or what the stencil really looked like!

This grid design is still one of my favorites.

This was just wax spatter on fabric that I did not like. After the overdyeing, it looks pretty cool!

And there was a bit of dyeing without wax and this one came out very interesting, though I’m not sure I’m in love with the colors I chose.

All in all, I’ve decided that I love playing with the soy wax, making designs and patterns but I hate cleaning the wax mess out of the fabrics. I need to do more research on the best way to do that and I obviously need to do more, more, more experimenting with waxing designs. It’s going to take quite a bit more thought than my usual slap-dash dyeing and I’m intrigued with the challenge!

Here’s a little cheer for dye days! Fun, learn, and happy happy!

Last Dye Day

Yesterday was my last planned dye day at my house. That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing any more. Just that I won’t be setting up my garage as an open studio.

Dye day photos are always pretty much the same, but I promised to always have my camera…and this time I played with soy wax resist and I learned quite a bit from my experiments.

I ordered these tjaps from Artistic Artifacts and couldn’t wait to try them out. The one on the left has lots of tiny, delicate little nooks and crannys and my respect for batik artists rose about 1000% after I tried this one.

This is a little hard to see, but all I ended up with was big blobs of wax. Tried letting most of the wax drip off before stamping, but then it cooled and did not penetrate the fabric. Tried multiple stamping with the same stamp and by the time I could see the delicate parts, the wax was off half of the other parts. I thought I’d try the less delicate stamp and see if that worked better!

You can see those lovely little leaves much better, but I did start out with some big blobs. The key for me was to let lots of the hot wax drip off before I tried to stamp. My friend Linda also suggested using a much shallower level of wax to start with and I think that might have made a huge difference with that first stamp, but did not go back to check it out.

I tried a stencil. It had quite a bit of fine detail, too, and the wax really seeped under it and blurred all the details. Less wax and cooler wax still seeped under and also did not penetrate the fabric. I did not adhere the stencil to the fabric, but I don’t think that would have made much of a difference, because the wax penetrates the fabric and that seepage would still have gone underneath. So next time I’ll try a less detailed stencil.

My favorite stamping tool has been far from the fine lines of these tjaps. It’s the bottom of a wire basket and makes a great grid pattern on the fabric.

I’ve used this before and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. My quilting love started with geometric traditional patterns and I’m still drawn to strong lines in my fabric choices. And now I can make my own…quite a difference from tracing templates 40 years ago!

I’m going to go rinse out my fabrics and I’ll show you the ‘after’ in the next post…

I Love Dye Days!

I keep shouting out that I love, love, love dyeing and I really do. And now that I have a huge, good space, even on the hottest of days, I love to host dye days with all my friends. It seems to happen with uncanny coincidence that we DO end up working on the hottest day of the year, but it’s still all good!

Looks like the aftermath of a wild party, doesn’t it?

I get caught up with what I’m doing, though and don’t remember to take pictures…but I don’t have to wait forever to rinse these out so I can show you some of my finished products.

Some of my sheer “mystery fabric” that takes dye–it came out beautifully!

This is 3 layers of the sheers–still wet–but I hope to make something layered like this.

When we get together, it’s a group that varies from absolute beginner to could-be-professional. It’s actually a great mix, because when you have to explain something to a beginner, you are reminded of several things: precautions, equipment needs, why we do things a certain way, and also that all of us do things differently and that’s all right, too. The more experienced are always so generous with sharing their knowledge, and we all learn new things.

My style is pretty slapdash. I love to crumple, squish, jam and dump dye for unpredictable results. Some people want results they can repeat, so they take notes about each step and each drop of dye they use. One lady applies her dye a teaspoon at a time until she gets her colors spread all over her fabric. Another uses a squeeze bottle to paint on the dye in more controlled lines and patterns. It’s fun to hang fabric on a line or fence and drip dye on it. Spray bottles create great textured designs. We teach each other so much just by working in the same space.

Something that I have only tried once before is using soy wax resist. I waited until the “cool” of the evening (only 88°) and heated up the wax and applied it to my fabric. I used a sink mat, a sandwich cutter, a paintbrush, and a couple of lids to apply the patterns of wax. My hands got all covered in wax before I thought about my camera, so no process pics. I’m really airheaded when it comes to those pictures!  Anyway, it really makes a mess, but this is what I got.

The wax is still in here, so I don’t know what the final product will be.

This started out as the orange fire fabric from last week. It was a little too orangey-yellow for me, so I decided it would be the perfect candidate for this experiment. Can’t wait to see if looks significantly different after wax removal. Probably will not be able to do that today, but I’ll show you how it turns out when it’s ‘un-waxed.’

All in all, another great dye day. I’m thinking we need another one in August, when my busy-ness will back off a bit. In the meantime, I have no lack of projects and deadlines, so it’s time to get away from the computer and back to work!