My fabric dyeing world

Nearly 100% of the instances when I try to describe what I do (to non-craft people) in my Rags Paper Stitches business result in the comment, “Oh, you tie dye T-shirts.” No, I do not.  The following picture shows an assortment of repurposed vintage damask table linens and doilies that I snow dyed last winter with a four color blend.

 

I recently made the decision to phase out my small stash of commercially printed fabrics for a number of reasons.  One, if I am to earn a living off of my own dyed fabrics, I should use what I make.  Another reason, the commercial print designs, nice as many of them are, are someone else’s design.  I have lost interest in incorporating someone else’s work in mine; I know that is expected with commercial fabric, it is just not me anymore.  I enjoy creating my own colors and patterns through dyeing fabric, plain and simple.  I still use solid colors of fabrics not readily available for me to dye, and I use a fair amount of cast off clothing to add texture and pattern I cannot achieve through my own dyed wares.  

The most succinct way I can think of to describe my craft is “art cloth.”  Much of my fabric gets dyed in solid colors, but I also make a fair amount of blends, using two to four colors in one dye bath.  The colors do not get added all at once.  The fabric might get scrunched, folded, and rearranged with each color addition.  I sometimes use ice or snow in my dye process to achieve stunning effects with color blending.  Then there is my own special “end-of-the-day” technique that uses all of the colors that I’ve mixed for a dye session – anywhere from 15 to 25 in one large piece of fabric. 

 

There are many more dye techniques I haven’t tried yet, not to mention further surface design by painting, stamping, screen printing, etc.   

Now back to that tie-dye thing.  There are some wonderful surface pattern effects that result from tying fabric in certain ways – shibori, for example, and vastly different from what the psychedelic crowd did to t-shirts.  Fabric dyeing is not solely 1960s era t-shirts.  I do not sell t-shirts at the county fairs or Grateful Dead concerts.

Quilt National Thoughts

At a recent Studio Art Quilt Associates  Ohio meeting, I was requested to give my thoughts on the symposium at the Quilt National opening in late May (held at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio).  At long last, here are those thoughts.  Please keep in mind that this is my take on the events of the day, and my recollections have gotten a little fuzzy in the weeks since the symposium.

 

Juror’s Panel Discussion

To me, it sounded like the most important criteria that the jurors were asking themselves was: do they want to come back to the quilt and look more at it?  They were looking for quilts that hold a viewer’s attention, ones that they would want to revisit more than once.  I imagine that the revisit factor could come about by different means – how did the artist do something (technique) or a message the artist wanted to convey.

Another important juror factor was connecting the artist’s statement about the work to the work itself.  I thought that the jurors were looking at images without any accompanying information or identification, so this was intriguing to me.  Personally, I don’t go for art of any media that has to be explained to me.   

There was an active discussion about the size of works accepted to Quilt National.  The jurors acknowledge that there were small art quilts that were “little gems,” but for the venue of the show, they wanted works that took advantage of the spacious exhibit hall.  To me, that still wasn’t a good reason why small works were consistently absent from Quilt National.  Good art is good art, regardless of size.  So, what I took from that discussion was at least at Quilt National, size matters! 

Marvin Fletcher lecture – I skipped his talk, I wanted to spend more time looking at the show. 

Selected Artists’ Panel – Four artists discussed their work and thoughts on their process, to some extent.  It was sort of interesting to hear their thoughts, but I didn’t really get anything out of the lectures.  I didn’t take any notes during the panel.  I feel like I should ask myself what I would want to get out of an artists’ panel discussion, or out of the symposium as a whole.

My overall thoughts on Quilt National:

Innovation is always claimed as a crucial criteria of acceptance into Quilt National, after viewing this edition of the show, I am wondering if the art quilt world has reached a plateau on innovation.  In my opinion, there were thirteen quilts out of eighty-four that were strongly influenced by the same artist/instructor.  Is that innovation?  Yes, those thirteen quilts had strong design merit, but the overall similarity left me a bit befuddled.  This was only my second Quilt National, and I noticed a couple repeat artists that had very similar works in the show in 2013 and this year.  I would expect any individual artist to continually grow and evolve, not stagnate.  There is a difference between having a distinct, identifiable style and essentially repeating oneself over and over.  Yes, the jurors are different each edition of Quilt National.  My point is that some things are no longer innovative.  There were other repeat entrants that clearly evolved from two years ago, just enough that it took a while to make the connection between their previous Quilt National entry and this year’s entry.  That’s what I like to see.

I’m certainly not disappointed that I went.  I most enjoyed the camaraderie with art quilters from around the world, most of whom I did not know.  It was refreshing to not have to explain or defend my chosen art medium.  I left the symposium feeling that I am on the right track with the things I am making, and I feel like I could hold my own at this level in a short time as I get better with technique.

Spring plant dye: Horsetail

Now that spring is well underway, I have a steadily increasing amount of different plants to try as dyes.  There is a shallow ditch running along the road frontage of my family’s acreage that is filling in with horsetails.  By horsetails, I ‘m not talking about the last part of Secretariat to cross the finish line, these horsetails are Equisetum arvense, a bright green, stiff, spindly, primitive plant.  The Equisetums are fascinating plants, “closely allied to the prehistoric order of the Calamitales, large and abundant treelike plants of the Carboniferous period nearly three hundred million years ago.”  (Boughton Cobb, A Field Guide to Ferns and their Related Families, Houghton Mifflin, 1963, p. 194)  Horsetails may be used for dyeing, here is the result:

 

A nice light tint of yellow green on the cottons, a bit darker on the silk.  I added a bit of alkaline modifier in the form of wood ash solution to one pot, and it seemed to lighten the color.  I’ve given up on weighing and measuring like most of my sources suggest.  Rough visual estimates are working fine for me, and if a batch of fabric doesn’t turn out, I’ll just try it again with a new dyebath. 

 

The sprigs in the picture that look like pine needles are the horsetail plant.

I’ve always had a deep appreciation for the natural world, I spent summers as a youngster tagging along with my mother to her job at a natural history museum.  Now that I am living on rural acreage, I am reacquainting myself with the wild flora and fauna.  While I was harvesting horsetails for dyeing, I was reminded of Albrecht Durer’s Great Piece of Turf watercolor from 1503.  The longer I concentrated on a square foot of meadow edge, I found more and more different plants.  Tip of the day: Never completely strip an area of a plant you are collecting, only take a fraction of what is there, and collect only if there is an abundance of what you seek.  Of course, don’t trespass either!

New venture

I will be a vendor at a craft show at Deerassic Park Education Center/National Whitetail Deer Education Foundation on May 30.  I believe that the show is a fundraiser for their education programs.  The venue is near Cambridge, Ohio, across from the main entrance to Salt Fork State Park on Route 22. 

I've been planning on developing a art/craft show line of small, affordable finished items, useful things.  So far, I have a selection of small purses and whole lot of "picnic kits" - quilted placemats with side pockets for silverware.  The placemats roll up and tie into a neat bundle and tuck nicely into a picnic basket, backpack or lunch bag.  They would also be great for anyone who takes a lunch to work.  I might take a small selection of fabric cuts to the show, though the focus will be finished work.  I'll have some art wall hangings too.

Fredericktown Quilters' Market

I had a bit of a milestone today in my little fiber arts business venture.  I had my debut as a vendor at a quilt show.  The event was a nice, small show in Fredericktown, OH.  I even managed to sell some things!  Thank you to those of you who made purchases from me, and thanks even more if you made it as far as to look up this blog.  I learned a lot from this first show, and I really appreciated talking to everyone who stopped by my table.  I received some good ideas on post topics, so please keep checking back.

Here is a view of my table:

The show was held in the multipurpose room of a high school; the Rachel's banner on the wall was NOT part of my set up.  Here's a bit of interesting trivia - apparently Fredericktown is where the iconic FFA (Future Farmers of America) jacket first appeared. 

My fabric in Cincinnati

If you are in the greater Cincinnati area, you will find a small selection of my hand dyed fabric at Silk Road Textiles in the College Hill neighborhood.  I just replenished the supply there; more vintage damask squares and Creativity Packs - assortments of small cuts of fabric and matching trims and embellishing fibers.  Visit Silk Road's website

Hungry Squirrels

The squirrels in my area had to share their stash of acorns and black walnuts with me this winter.  Believe me, what I collected for my fabric dyeing was miniscule compared to what I left behind for the wildlife.  Here’s how my first attempts at natural dyes turned out:

 

The cottons didn’t take the dyes too well, some of the literature on natural dyes hints at that.  The silk organza though, really soaked it up.  I definitely want to try more silks in the future, and wool fabric as well.  I have been peeling lichen off of my firewood, and I think I just about have enough to try a small batch of fabric.  I have also been picking up fallen wild cherry branches, and have them soaking in water for a dye session soon.  The wild cherry is supposed to yield pink tones.  The lichen, I have no idea as to possible color, but I know that it can be used as a dye.