I can't believe how much fun I'm having doing all the preparations for our retreat at my cottage. We're going to be experimenting with indigo dyeing for the first time and I've been preparing fabric to create lots of fun and interesting results (I hope)!
I found this fabulous mini electric frying pan in a thrift shop ($3.00!) and it's perfect for melting my soy wax. I'm using a little tin inside the pan so that I can use less wax but still get enough depth to dip my tjanting tool into the wax and fill the little bowl on it.
I started out doodling circles on a piece of cotton using the tjanting. As you can see, it sometimes drips larger drops of wax, but I love the randomness of that and I love dots so it's all good!
I liked the doodled circles and polka dots so much that I decided to grab an white tank top from my dresser and I put a row of the circles around the neckline and then added dots randomly all over the front and back of the shirt.
One the next piece I started by using the tjanting to write the word indigo repeatedly and then after a few rows of that I doodled some simple flower shapes. I connected them with some thin lines and added more dots...dots are good!
This next piece was first taped using masking tape, and then I created various line patterns within the rectangles and squares that I had masked off. I did another similar one in which I doodled various circle patterns inside the spaces, but I forgot to take a shot of that.
The final piece done with the soy wax resist is this piece of hand dyed green that I decided I wanted to over dye. I created a design of doodled circles and dots. Again, I forgot to take a photo of it once I finished with the wax, but this shot 'in progress' give you an idea of where I'm going with it. I can't wait to see what these look like after they're dyed with the indigo!
In my last post, I had folded and clapped some fabric, so today I decided to see what would happen if I pressed the fold lines to make them more distinct. This piece was them clamped with some plastic belt buckles that I found at a discount store.
Another idea I wanted to try was using rubber stamps and 'Stazon Ink'. I love text in my work, so the first stamp I used was this wonderful called 'Creativity Flows', by Traci Bautista, from her Grafitti Glam line.
Then I went into my stamp stash and pulled out another few that I especially like. Sadly I don't know what they're called or where they came from...collected over the years from a variety of sources. I imagine using some of these as small elements within larger pieces and others as great backgrounds.
The final experiment for now is a small piece that is a layer of tissue paper over top of a bit of fabric. I stitched the two layers together using a straight stitch on the machine. I hope that the tissue paper doesn't just disintegrate when it gets wet.
Hopefully my next post will be of a whole lot of beautiful indigo pieces! Until then, have a fabulous day!
As you know from some previous posts, my friends and I did some indigo dyeing while up at my cottage. This photo is an indication of what the back yard looked like. We had plastic drop sheets everywhere so that we could lay out the fabric while it oxidized, before we rinsed it and hung it to dry. We all discovered that we aren't too keen on wearing rubber gloves, so after a while the gloves came off and we all ended up with blue under our nails (among other places LOL).
Indigo is a fun (but smelly) process. I wish I had more photos to show you the process, but I didn't want to risk the safely of my camera while I was working. Once dipped, the fabric is a bright lime green colour and it only begins to turn blue when it is exposed to the air and begins to oxidize. We all wished we could have somehow captured some of the wonderful patterns of blues and greens, but it was short lived.
