Dyeing with discontinued Createx fiber dyes

There was an art store closing in my area the other week, and I went to buy a couple things. On the "free" table, there was a box of Createx liquid fiber dyes.  Not one to pass up free dyes, I thought I'd give them a whirl. I tried to find out how old these may be, since Createx doesn't make them any more, but couldn't find anything. My feeling is ten or more years, as they had a price tag from a different art store that hasn't been around for a long time (They had been opened and partially used, they weren't for sale in the store I was at. I think they were class supplies that got tucked away forever).

My first stab, I tried to ice dye with them, which was a huge waste of time. Evidently they don't like the cold. I washed them, soaked them in a Soda Ash solution again, and did low immersion dyeing. The bottles said they were concentrated and that I should dilute them 7:1 part water, but I did more of a 4:1 mix. The results aren't bad.  The best piece is in the first picture on the right. This is a heavy weight twill, almost a denim weight. The rest kind of look like a Monet painting. I think it's funny that they have some much pink/magenta in them, as I only used a small amount of red and a ton of blues and purples. I think the purples must have changed color due to age.  All the containers had rust, royal blue, a darker blue, and two purples. Some of them also got some red. Sorry, I hate to iron, so fabrics are still wrinkly.

These blues remind me of cloudy skies and I am thinking about  making a cloudy sky quilt with them.

I have a couple pieces that are blah, which I plan to dye Navy, with Procion MX dyes, sometime in the future. I have an idea for a quilt with Shiva stick texture rubbings.

Oct meeting of CO Mixed Media, Square

For the October meeting, we decided to work on square pieces. There are quite a few Calls for Entry locally for square work, some specifically 12" x 12" and one that can be any size square.

Simone, Sabyl, Enid, Gayla, Liz, and I had a great time. I was so wrapped up in working that I didn't get my camera out until after Enid and Gayla had left.  Enid is starting a piece using some old family photos, I hope she brings it to the next group meeting so we can see how it is coming along. Gayla is working on a felted piece and wants to include some 3D elements. She finished laying it out at the meeting, so I hope I see it after it is felted.

Simone did a fabulous piece with a 50's era feel. It's pretty awesome.

 Sabyl is working with abstract shapes. I love the turquoise and pink!

This is one Sabyl just started.

Liz also used abstract shapes. As you can see, even though Liz and Sabyl are both using an abstract "vocabulary", their pieces, styles, and color palettes are much different.

I had a piece I had started previously with some collage, including masking tape and dripped paint, all in white. I wanted to work in a bright color palette, which is not something I usually do. After painting the background, I added some dots and dashes that I wanted to look like a flower field, but I don't think it's there yet. I am thinking of adding large flowers in the foreground, but I don't feel in a flowery mood today, so may just put more layers and colors and see what happens.

I played with some other things, but they aren't far enough along for pictures yet.

Wool "felt paper"

Using the same technique from my previous post, I made some additional wool "felt paper". I included some other fibers for highlights.  This is way quicker than traditional wet felting and I can make a few at the same time. I don't like having to wait for them to dry, but that is just part of the process. 

Here are pictures of the wool prior to wetting/applying textile medium:

 

This one is mainly wool with a dyed silk hanky included in the sky area. I included some red wool "nepps" (I call them wool boogers) to look like a sprinkling of flowers. For the most part, they stuck well, except that one on the right by itself, so I glued it on after it dried.

I purposely left the sky and ground a solid color to let the tress be the focal point on this one, but I find it rather blah.

I like this one better since it has some texture on the foreground.

Since these are held together with textile medium, I am not going to try any hand-felted accents, but may do some free-motion stitching on them.

Making soy silk papers, and other fiber papers

This past weekend I made a lot of dyed soy silk and wool roving. I also have dyed nylon, bamboo, and tencel fibers in my stash that I had previously dyed. I wanted to try my hand at making soy silk papers.  I wanted to make wispy light soy silk papers. I also wanted to see if I could make wool roving papers that looked wet felted. I love how they all turned out.

Here is the start of the wool roving paper, the bottom layer was mostly soy silk.

Then I added wool roving, curly wool, nylon, and angelina fibers on top.

This is my try at wispy soy silk paper. It has some bamboo, tencel, silk, and angelina fibers as well.

I didn't take pictures of the other two pieces with the fibers laid out.

There is a towel and clear plastic protecting my table top.  The fibers are laid out on fine tulle and then another piece of tulle is placed on top. I then used a paint brush to apply hot soapy water (1/4 to 1/2 tsp hand dish washing detergent to 2 cups) to the fibers.  I don't want them swimming in water, I just want the fibers to be wet. Once the front looks good, I flip it over and do the back. (My instructions said wait 2 to 4 hours to make sure the fibers are saturated, but I don't think that is necessary. I did wait a bit, then continued). It seems most of the instructions I saw used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium, which I didn't have on hand. I used Golden's GAC 900 Textile medium.  I applied it with a brush, just on one side per the instructions I was using.  It worked really well. I think next time I will blot the fibers with a towel to remove some of the excess water first. Also, I think I would apply the medium to both sides, especially on the wool one.  I took them outside and hung them on a clothesline to dry (Put them in a plastic tub or similar to carry them outside, as mine were very drippy). Hopefully my shrubs and grass by the clothesline don't mine a coat of textile medium!  Once dry, I take the tulle off.  I need to iron all of them, but here are pictures of them un-ironed.

I didn't take a picture of laying out the fibers on this one.  This is all real silk, laid out in two layers and is very solid. I wanted to have a "control sample" of fiber paper made exactly per the instructions, but wish I would have made it wispy.

Somewhat wispy, this is miscellaneous fibers (bamboo, tencel, soy silk). The purply rectangular bits at the bottom are silk throwster's waste that I bought pre-dyed from Wild Heathers (I bought it at a fabric convention, but I'm sure they have a website, and they also have a store now near the Denver Art Museum).

This is the piece that I did show the fiber layout above.  This is some silk, tencel, bamboo, and soy silk. I love the wispy open look of this (although the colors don't blend as well as I hoped).

This is the wool/ soy silk piece. I really like both sides so I think I will play with this some more.

Wool Side:

Soy Silk Side:

I plan to try to make wool paper that looks like my wet felted landscapes. This is a much quicker and easier way to create a felted looking piece.  The wool piece isn't completely glued through, it seems like I could pull it apart into two layers (which could be interesting in itself), so I am going to wet it and apply textile medium again to hopefully create a better bond.

New abstract painting

I am pretty thoughtful when creating art, especially my assemblage pieces. I often know what I want the final piece to look like before I start. If I am thinking about changing something, I like to ponder it for a bit before implementing it.  It makes for slow art making. Maybe that is why I like experimenting with dyes and fabric painting where I don't have an agenda. I just enjoy the process and ask myself "what if" often.

I am trying to set aside more time just to have pieces for play. Originally this piece was going to be the background for a bird/pulley/hand piece similar to this one, but with a textured blue background. I wanted to try a technique by Tracey Russell; she did a demo the Art Students League Denver a few weeks ago and it was very interesting. She layered paint, pieces of painted rice paper, and mark making in her piece.

I layered different blue painted rice papers and tissue papers in the piece and it really didn't look very good, so scumbled white gesso on top. I drew circles with black india ink and let them run down . I then added red marks in the center of the circles, then added the yellow section in the middle with finger painting.  I didn't like the black circles so covered them and most of the canvas with a dark Prussian blue. I used a wet paper towel to pull up some the paint. The red marks were kind of faint as they were originally done in a transparent paint. I made them stronger by re-painting them with an opaque red.  It's very abstract, I guess it could be a landscape. I liked it enough to call it done!  This piece is 12" x 12" on a wood panel.

Dyeing soy silk (and some wool)

I wanted to make some "soy silk paper", sometimes called "silk fusion" and bought some white soy silk fiber at Fancy Tiger in Denver.  I wanted to try dyeing it.  Looking on the Internet, it says to consider soy silk like a protein fiber, like wool, not a plant fiber, like cotton.

Since I had experimented with dyeing fibers before, see links below, I thought I would try Kool Aid dyeing and Color Hue dyeing the soy silk.

Links to previous experiments:
     See here  for wool roving dyeing (and silk scarf dyeing) with Color Hue dye
     See here for bamboo dyeing with Rit dyes
     See here for bamboo dyeing with Procion MX dyes
     See here for Nylon dyeing with Kool aid
     See here for Tencel dyeing with Rit dyes

First I tried the Kool Aid dyeing. No fiber is safe when I am doing experiments so some wool and wool/silk blend roving also get in the dye. I also found a package of wavy wool I bought at a garage sale.

Fibers from left to right, soy silk, wool/silk blend, two types of wool (Merino and Brown? that is what is on the receipt, I bought these a while ago), and the wavy wool. I used 3 to 4 packets of Kool Aid for each batch. Please note that the Kool Aid is the color in the cup that Punchy is holding on the front of the package, not the color of the package itself. I had four purple packages that I thought were all grape, and it turned out I had two grape (purple) but two were some other flavor that was actually a gross red color. I didn't realize this until I had already stirred them all up in water and basically got maroon.

 I soak my fibers in water to help absorption and squeeze all the water out before putting it in the dye batch.

I mix my Kool Aid packets in a microwavable container with about a cup and a half of water. I pour a little vinegar on the fibers before they go in. Kool Aid is supposed to be "acid enough" without the vinegar, but it doesn't hurt.

Shove 'em in. Stir 'em a bit. I nuke it in the microwave for 2 minutes (lightly covered). I let it rest for at least 10 minutes. Sometimes that is enough for the fibers to take all the dye. The water should be clear or a cloudy white when all the dye is absorbed.  If there is still dye in the water, it can be nuked some more, but be careful as I don't think the soy silk likes the heat.  Nuke one more minute if necessary, and let it sit until cool.(Microwaves vary so I take no responsibility if you have problems or issues related to microwave dyeing.)

Here are my fibers cooling down. I don't want to rinse them while they are hot, as the wool may felt due to the quick temperature change. After they cool, I will rinse them well in cool water. If I feel they still have a lot of dye in them, I will let them sit in 2" of water in the sink, squeezing the fibers and changing the water every so often. The maroon took a ton of work to rinse out. 

While they are cooling, I am going to set up my other dyes.  These are Color Hue dyes and I got the sample set last Christmas. I have only seen these for sale on the Internet, and am pretty sure my set came from Dharma Trading. These are concentrated dyes, and I already have some mixed with water in small squirt and spray bottles.

I set up seven sandwich ziplock baggies and seven sets of fiber. Again, I wet my fibers before putting them in the baggies. I leave the fibers a little wet as this will help the dyes move through the fibers. These are considered instant set dyes, so after I add the dye (a healthy squirt into the baggie), I squeeze the bottom of the baggie with one hand, making sure the dyes don't try to escape at the top. If there are any white areas left on the fiber, I add more dye. I sometimes will squirt one color at one end and another color at the other to get a variegated color. The water is supposed to be clear when the dye is absorbed, but my water is never clear. I let them sit in their baggies for a few hours, squeezing occasionally. I then poured any remaining colored dye water into a large ziplock bag with some damp silk fabric since I didn't want the dye to go to waste (I had 3 silks each in a large baggy, one each for yellow/green, blue, and red dyes).

 Per the directions, after dyeing with Color Hues, I just need to rinse out the extra dye and then let them air dry.  I had issues with a previous batch, so I actually took these out of their baggies and let them air dry without rinsing then first. When they were dry I rinsed them, then let them air dry again.

Here is a picture of both the Kool Aid and the Color Hue dyed fibers.

Here are just the soy silks.  The ones on the left are Kool Aid dyed and they became curly/frizzy from the heat. The Color Hue ones still have smooth fibers. I did have problems with the soy silk not being completely dyed throughout. When I loosen the fibers, there are white patches that didn't get dyed. In the future I will spread the fibers before putting it in the baggy or container with the dyes.

 Soy silk: Color Hue dyed on the left, Kool Aid/microwave dyed on the right.

Next time, making fiber papers!

Assemblage show

It was fun to see the show at the Art Students League. Afterwards we went to some galleries on Sante Fe, which always inspires me.  I was good and skipped the yarn/fabric shop on Sante Fe. I definitely have a big enough fabric/yarn stash already...