Whispering in Color.... Low Immersion Dyeing, Avocado Dyeing, Resist Dyeing...

Spent the better part of last week in my little dye studio in the garage...

 Submerging, immersing, folding, squishing, painting, and resisting everything in sight.

I had wonderful results on three weights of cheese cloth....

Producing both vivid (with procion) and muted (with avocado and walnuts) colors.

Have several jars of this currently curing in the sun

wherein I used purple cabbage, beets and pomegranate for color.

This light airy weave is my favorite.

These are all naturally achieved colors with the exception of the

rust colored sample.  That was procion.

Avocado and walnuts produced wonderful results

on muslin and linen, but particularly silk noil.

These photos do not nearly capture the beautiful shades

of pink, taupe and tan achieved.

Walnut dye using flour paste resist worked 

fantastic on muslin and kona cotton.

flour paste crackle resist on cotton...

produced beautiful veins.

and also produced nice stencil results.

I was quite pleased that even the tiny little script detail

was nearly legible using a thicker flour paste mixture.

I so LOVE how these pine trees came out.

One of these will most definitely find it's way into 

my personal symbols slow cloth I have been working on

over at Spirit Cloth.  I will be posting an update on that piece shortly.

These bubbles were produced using Cleanline Resist.  

I kinda like this one.

This Leaf print was achieved by simply painting

fig tree leaves with kelp thickened procion dye and pressing.

I can only imagine how beautiful they

will be with the addition of hand stitching.

A  bit of shibori play (much more of this to come,

as I have pieces stitched, folded, twisted and clamped waiting to 

go into the indigo vat I am creating.)

And finally, a few cotton scraps low immersion dyed by scrunching up 

and placing them in a plastic ziplock bag and drizzling

two colors randomly and scrunching some more.

Left the plastic bags in the sun for an entire day.

I kept a notebook detailing fabrics, temperatures, mordant (if any), resist method and time periods.  Very simple, really.  And I honestly can say that I  am not disappointed in any of the trials.

I have things soaking, cooking, drying and mordanting all over the house. It is a fascinating process - dyeing.  I'm a bit of a mad scientist at heart.  Throwing and mixing different things into different pots to see what yields. 

It is so rewarding to use these pieces of cloth in my own work.