I had such a wonderful day of color and fun!! Judy at Artistic Artifacts is starting up Dyeing Day Workshops! What a delight!! We learned how to work with Procion MX dyes and to Parfait Dye in the methods described by Fiber Artist Ann Johnston, in her book Accidental Color. Judy has been dying her own wonderful vintage finds useing these techniques, for years and now she is teaching. She has a great space for working , on big plastic covered tables with all of the dyes ready mixed and ready to go!!
We worked in quart sized canning jars and layered our fabrics and color and Soda Ash solutions one on top of the other.
Judy provided 4 fat quarters of cotton fabric and bits of trims for us to use. We all brought various fabrics of our own, that we wanted to try.
I came home with these four jars absoluetly packed with fabric and dye. After letting them sit overnight and washing in the machine, this is the result!!!
Here is a much better view followed by some close ups!!!
It is 92 degrees here today and it feels like 103, but I simply had to see all of my fabrics hanging on the line together in the sun!!! The things that I do for a few pictures!!!!!
Here are some shots of my favorite pieces!!!
I am totally amazed at the variety of colors and the amount of fabric that I was able to cram into 4 canning jars! The class ran from 12:30 - 3:30. Granted Judy had all of the dyes mixed and ready to go and the set up was done, but we were all new to this!! Look what I accomplished in 3 hours!! I am sold on this method and I am so excited to use these fabrics in upcoming quilts and collages of all sorts!! One never knows where you will see them again!!
If anyone is in the area of metro D.C. and you are interested in building a stash of hand dyed fabrics, I can't reccomend this workshop highly enough!!! You can find more info about all of the workshops offered at ARTISTIC ARTIFACTS HERE.
14 comments:
These look great and I may even have some old canning jars in the basement.
Elizabeth, these are wonderful. I can't believe you got all that crammed into 4 canning jars.
Love all your delightful dyed goodies hanging there from the clothesline!
Beautiful Vibrant colors! how exciting! Glad you had fun!
Elizabeth, I wanted to call you yesterday and see if you had washed your fabrics yet!! They are wonderful!! We will have another dye day in September!! Judy
Oh my goodness Elizabeth! What a beautiful post. Sounds like the dyeing day was wonderful! (Jacky and I are hoping to do a dyeing day with Elizabeth Armstrong at some stage).
The results from your class are WONDERFUL!!
Now that's the kind of washing I like:)
Dot xx
Elizabeth, the dye results are wonderful. The Radiance fabric is 55% cotton/45% silk, I talk about dyeing in a couple of posts. It takes the same dye as cotton, but the results are very different. Beautiful colors.
I do love what you did!!! I especially like the idea of adding more threads and vintage pieces to the dye bath.....gives more interest to whatever you are constructing (but you already knew that!).
So when will you come play with me????
xo
HOW BEAUTIFUL! Isn't it fun? The "mixing up ahead of time" part is not hard. Becoming addicted to hand dyes is not hard either!!!
Very cool clothes line shots! I didn't know people still had clothes lines. I hope I can come to the next dye day. What wonderful colors. It looks like you can mix several colors in a jar. What fun.
OK, I'm in! I own the dye, I have the space and I am going to put up a clothes line at my new building.
These rock, Elizabeth. Yummmmmy!
Jane
I love the photos of all the fabric on the line.. would make a great blog header! I am always amazed how much fabric you can cram in to a pot but unlike your neat method I hang my coffee stained fabrics in the shower and it makes a mess!!LOL
WOW!!! My head is swimming!!
Love all of the colour Elizabeth, what a fabulous time you had.
Post a Comment