Cost of dye supplies

When I decided to pull out my dye supplies last week, I realised I was pretty low on just about everything.  I hopped onto the website of the two local (Australian) suppliers I use for procion dyes and was horrified to find that the 250g tubs I wanted were $69 each!!!  So I checked a couple of American sites and found that I could get what I wanted from Dharma trading for, on average, $15 a tub (each colour is priced differently - I bought 8 and they varied from $6.59 to $19.89).

Given that the Aussie dollar is heading towards parity, it only added a very small amount to convert from US to AU$ - and even with $55 postage, I still saved over $350 ordering from overseas!  That is unbelievable.  And to cap it off, I ordered on the website on Friday, and it was delivered to my door on the following Wednesday!  It takes longer for stuff to come from Canberra, three hours drive away!

Now only Hancocks of Paducah would hurry up and have one of their 'free shipping' events while the dollar is still around 96 cents, I would be in seventh heaven!!

Back to dyeing.....

Day 3 - Mission accomplished!

Well - I got everything done I set out to do. I was up early and washed out all the fabric I dyed. By nine o'clock it was twirling in the breeze. The second photo shows a rust dyed piece on the right, and on the left is one of yesterday's rust pieces that I overdyed. This is the frying pan one

I like the effect that the overdying has - it sort of puts the rust bits into context, rather than just having them floating about on a white background. It has also brought out some details I hadn't noticed before. On the one below, there are a couple of shapes that look like fish -- the washers created 'eyes'- at least that's what I think!

This next piece I didn't show yesterday, before over dyeing -but I really like the criss cross lines in the rust bit. I got that by rolling the fabric around a piece of PVC pipe and then wrapping tightly with thin wire.

Here is a close up of it. BTW, I notice that on my blog, if you click on the photos you don't get a close up - even though that is what happens on everyone else's I visit. Does anyone know what I have to do to make it happen? Are there some special settings/options I am supposed to choose??





This piece I decided not to overdye. I really like how it turned out. I think it has potential to be a whole cloth piece, with some further surface design added.

Here is another piece using the bars from the barrel that my husband cut up. He drilled some holes in one piece (in the centre) and cut one piece with a zig zag edge, like a saw, to add interest (clever fellow!).

Here is a close up of those two pieces.

The only thing that didn't work was the screen I prepared yesterday. I am not sure what was wrong - I think the alginate wasn't thick enough, but anyway, no matter how many times I squeegeed the image wouldn't break down and start transferring - and it took me ages and ages at the sink to scrub the damn thing clean. Maybe I let it get too dry?? Anyway, I can have a go at that another day.

And finally - did I actually MAKE something with all of this? Yes, I did! A little quilt - about 10 x 14 inches. I fiddled around for a while not sure where to begin, then picked up a pencil and sketched a very simple design - the three rectangles and the circle, with a sort of wavy line going through. Then I gathered up the fabrics I had produced this weekend and tried to figure out what to use.

I kept wanting to use the bubble wrap discharge from the earlier post, but as soon as I picked up a piece I had discharged with some rug grip, I saw skyscrapers, and then I knew the circle would be the moon. Once it went from being an abstract to a little city scape, I decided I didn't need the wavy bit. I fused the pieces onto a dyed background with black Misty Fuse and did some simple machine stitching - free form around the circle and with the walking foot round the rectangles. Finished off with some fused binding and ta daa!!

I had a very productive weekend - I have lots of lovely rusted pieces underway and am quickly developing ideas for what to do with them. I do like the discharged pieces though, and still want to do something with the bubble wrap fabrics - maybe some postcards? Stay tuned!

Day 2

Well I got everything done today I planned to - dyed up 2-3 metres of fabric; rust dyed another metre or so; prepared a screen to do some improvisational screen printing (it is still drying); and did a few monoprints using thickened dye, plus pressed all the lovely stuff I made yesterday using my wonderful new Singer magic press thingie - beats ironing!!

Here is a rust dyed piece using the square plate I mentioned yesterday. The little circles are from washers. This next piece turned out well - the big circles are from the paint tin lid and the broad rectangle bit sticking out (like a frying pan with handle) is from a piece of iron that used to be wrapped around a big barrel. I had forgotten that we had one in the garden that rotted away, and my husband had kept the metal bands. He flattened them out as much as possible, and cut them into manageable lengths. I have a piece fermenting away with several lengths of this stuff on it - can't wait until tomorrow to see how it looks!

One problem with this rusting stuff is that it all turns out orange - and I am not a very orange person. Also, I am not enamoured of the stark white of the background. So, I have already dumped these pieces into a soda soak and they have had a wash of fairly dilute procion dye added in slate blue/grey, to tone down the background and complement the rust colour. Will see how they look tomorrow too!


Did some more bleaching - good old bubble wrap monoprint was first.Then I had a go at freehand spirals combined with some made from a rubber stamp. I doubt that exposing my rubber stamps to bleach products is a very good idea. However, I rinsed them off immediately, didn't leave them sitting around in the stuff. Oh well, if it shortens their life, at least it will have been in a good cause!



And finally, a monoprint using the cleaning gel, that didn't quite work - it was too runny, so I got big areas exposed - although, I do think it will make a good canvas on which to stitch, and I can always stamp/stencil/screen on top as well.

There are lots of other pieces, but these are a good sample of what I did. My husband has really got into the spirit of the rust dyeing. He keeps emerging from 'the shed' with new ideas and things to try - some rusty chain emerged a while ago, and he also hammered a lot of little nails (which rust really easily, apparently) into a length of wood, in a nice curvy pattern. I have got those on a piece of fabric - so hopefully, I will end up with a line of little rusted circles - we shall see!

So, tomorrow's jobs are: print off using my dried screen; wash out all the fabric I dyed, dry and press; check on how the rusting is going on the various pieces, AND - make something!!

Playday

A long time without a blog - work has been horrible, I have been sick - you really don't want to know.....I certainly don't.

On to happier thoughts - I have a week's leave, so to start off on the right note, had a couple of friends over for a playday. Neither had ever dyed fabric before, so I got them started on that - it is a bit cold here for dyeing, so they have taken their little treasures home in plastic bags to wash out tomorrow. But here are some I prepared earlier!

I always swore I wouldn't get into dyeing - way too messy - but finally decided I couldn't resist the idea of creating my own colour combinations instead of relying on someone else's - I must admit, it is rather addictive.

After lunch we moved on to some other surface design techniques - stamping, mono printing, rubbing plates, with Shiva sticks and finally, some foiling. Great fun was had by all.

Fabric dyeing and TAST

For years I vowed never to get into fabric dyeing - way too messy - I could see myself splattering stuff everywhere - I have always found the concept of being creative whilst remaining tidy too bizarre for words. However, I recently relented and invested in some Procion dyes. I got some undyed yarns from here. And then I had a play! This photo is a little dark, but I dyed some cotton and some scrim/cheesecloth and a few different yarns.

And here is what I have started making. I embellished the cheesecloth onto some dyed cotton, with a thin layer of dyed merino between - I texturised it quite a bit, embellishing from both front and back - I like the way the little cheesecloth loops come through to the front - then I used some of my coordinating threads to do some of the TAST stitches. I bought a spray of fake flowers (why do they call them silk flowers - who are they kidding?) and pulled them apart - they were white, so I painted them with some Setacolour paints and have embellished them in the centre to hold them down - but the petals stand proud of the base. They aren't very firmly attached - they will need some french knots/beads in the centres.

Obviously this is still a work in progess - needs a lot more stitching - but its a start. And I am quite addicted to dyeing stuff!

The Texere order was shipped promptly, although postage from UK to Australia was a bit steep. Does anyone know of a supplier of undyed yarn closer to home?