No Art Work For a Bit

There is a family emergency and no time for me to work on any art projects for a while.  While I miss time spent creating art, I flat out can’t concentrate when coping with our medical system.  ERs, hospitals, rehab units - it’s unbelievable until you are smack dab in the middle of the quagmire.

Along with all the pain, there is also laughter, and the shared bond of family pulling together.

I probably won’t be posting much to the blog this month, but I had to share a picture of another family all together:

We have 3 mother turkeys with quite a brood on our property and they take strolls through the garden and lawn a couple of times a day.  This is how close they come to our house:

 I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

Another Print Session

Finally, a normal day - I woke up at 9:30am.  My brain was so tired, it finally let my body sleep. Refreshed and ready to print fabric again, I am very happy with today’s results.  It took a few tries, but I got exactly what I wanted this morning.

This first try was pretty lousy.  I was attempting to build on yesterday’s idea of printing layers.  The top layer was the cotton voile and a PFD cotton Robert Kaufman fabric ironed to freezer paper was underneath.  I taped everything to sheet of regular computer paper and got an awful lot of smudges.  The paper thickness lever needed to be adjusted.  Also, the cotton voile absorbed more of the ink than I thought.  The image on the fabric beneath is barely discernible, so I didn’t even bother to try and photograph it.

This second try was worse than the first.  I ironed the PFD cotton Robert Kaufman fabric to freezer paper, taped it to computer paper and it stretched in the printer pretty badly.  I was surprised that it separated from the freezer paper so badly.  It was also taped along the edges.  And I forgot to use the smaller image, so got a full page printed.  That could be part of the reason why it shifted so much.  The printing started right at the edge.

 

This third try was the winner.  I used the same PFD cotton Robert Kaufman and skipped ironing it to freezer paper.  Instead I took some heavier weight 110# card stock and taped the fabric to that.  I adjusted the paper thickness lever as wide as it would go and this last print turned out perfectly.

Using the printer is sooooo much easier than dyeing fabric.  It’s perfect for small projects, but I won’t be putting away my dyes any time soon.  There is a time and place for each method to be used, and I’m blessed that both are viable options for me.

Even Earlier Wake-up Work Session Today

Another early rising for me.  My daughter is embroiled in a real estate nightmare and this time I didn’t wait till 6 am to get up.  I got up at 3 am this morning.  I’m staying positive and refraining from saying what I think about lawyers - not all of them - just a few in particular. 

Focusing on creative endeavors is a welcome respite from all the stress, and it’s really quiet at this time of the day.  No phone calls to interrupt the creative flow.  Positive vibes, yes positive vibes being sent out to the universe.  Hopefully, they’ll do some good - to somebody - anybody - and if they want to rebound back here, that would be good too.

This morning - or should I say in the middle of the night - I tried printing some of my photographs on sheer fabric.  I have a super duper Epson Photo 2000P that uses archival ink - no heat setting required - prints on fabric like a dream - cost an arm and a leg years ago when I bought it - never used it much to print fabric till this year, and am in love with this printer.

Another article in AQS magazine - Photo Illusion by Susan Purney Mark - has great instructions and suggestions for printing on sheer silk organza.   Yes, I have some of that, but I also have some gorgeous Robert Kaufmann cotton/silk voile from that recent fabric order. I liked how it dyed, so thought I’d try using it instead. 

I messed up the size so it didn’t go through the printer the first time - observe the gobbledygook printed at the top - but once I taped the fabric to a piece of regular paper, it fed through the printer great.  I actually like the ghost image the best.  It’s very hard to see in the photo, but looks great in person.  I’m going to experiment with putting multiple layers of this light weight fabric through at the same time to see how many will absorb ink.  It will probably be a great way to create different values - easily. 

These are my mother’s hands and the photographs were taken 2 years ago when she was in hospice.  It took me a long time to try and do something with the images, but the time is right now.  In fact, I feel like she’s here saying,  “It’s all right.  Everything will work out.”

Sunrise Sewing Session

Not much sewing has been going on lately.  Our garden is in full production mode and I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen blanching and freezing veggies, and making my very own specialty - cherry tomato and zucchini marinara.  It might sound weird, but it’s the best recipe I ever made up in my life. 

All my basil is dried and stored away, and before the sweet red peppers are ready to be roasted and peeled, and a few pan fulls baked with meat and rice stuffing, I got in a bit of sewing this morning.  Now everybody who knows me, knows I am not a morning person.  Heck, I never make an appointment before 1pm - if possible.  But, I was experiencing some heavy duty sewing machine withdrawal and found myself selecting fabrics at 6 am to make a couple of blocks based on the recent AQS article Double Fun by Linda Hungerford. 

It’s a fun technique, and I pretty much well followed the instructions - step by step.  I do think the fabric strips should be cut 13″ long though.  I also didn’t cut away the fabric behind the circle on one of the pieces.  The reason?  I did cut it away from the first circle and when I cut through the circle for the first curve, then sewed the strips together, the fabric puckered a bit.  Everything is on the bias, and I liked having the background fabric behind the circle to stabilize the circle piece.  It does make for heavier seams to sew through, but my sewing machine sewed through them just fine.

Overall, I’m pleased with the concept, but don’t like the grey/black striped fabric.  That’s what I get for selecting fabric before the sun comes up.  The red didn’t photograph well, but trust me, it’s really red - not orangey red either. 

Since I wasn’t crazy about the striped fabric, I played around with it in my paint program and came up with something that I like a lot better.  Here’s a photo of the original with the digital.  It’s a subtle change, but I like it much better than the stripe.

Linda gives instructions for making transition blocks so you can piece a quilt, but I’m not going to make them.  Instead, I’ll use these two blocks for machine quilting practice pieces.  I’ll probably paint over the grey striped fabric I don’t like, or put something sheer over it, maybe even applique another fabric over the top.  I haven’t decided yet, but it felt very good to hear my sewing machine humming along, the iron pinging as it kept itself hot, and watch the sun rise - a rare sight for this night owl.

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008 Concluded

Today I have the results from the 3rd attempt to match a color from a photograph. 

The 100% cotton at the top is the same cotton I used in the 2nd attempt.  The big difference was in batching the 2nd attempt for 4 or 5 hours vs batching this 3rd attempt for 48 hours.  I got a closer match with the 2nd attempt for this cotton - however - look at the marked difference in the other fabrics.  They are appreciably darker.

Everything was dyed at 3% DOS.  I weighed each piece of fabric and calculated the water and dye concentrate amounts for each piece, and they were dyed in separate containers.  The fabric was placed into their containers dry.  All were batched for the same amount of time, rinsed, washed, boiled and ironed the same, but what a difference in color.

The upper right corner of the cotton/bamboo blend fabric is almost a perfect match.  I’m thrilled. 

The next fabric swatch 60% linen and 40% cotton is pretty close also.

The other fabrics are not great matches, but that’s all right.  I learned a lot, plus I got to try a lot of new fabrics.

My conclusions?

It’s a lot of work trying to match colors from a photograph.  It can be done though, and I actually enjoyed the attempts.  I met a lot of nice people, discovered a lot of new color analysis websites, and my high school algebra came in very handy. 

Basically, I selected a color and used the dropper in my paint program to isolate it.  That gave me the Hex number. 

Next, I got the cyan, magenta and yellow percentages for the color from http://web.forret.com/tools/color.asp?RGB=%23FDD26C

From there,  I went to Oulu’s dye applet http://www.student.oulu.fi/~oniemita/dye/dyemixer/  and selected my blue, red and yellow dyes using the percentages from the forret website.

This is where a little dye experience comes in handy.  The blues are a bit different from each other.  So are the 2 reds, and the yellows.   It takes a little practice to know which ones will combine to create the color you’ve selected.

Additionally, I found when I thought I had a perfect match - eyeballing it - I really didn’t.  I used the print screen capture to copy the dye applet color into my paint program.  Then I used the dropper to compare the R,G,B values.  They were always off.  It took a bit of tweaking, but evenutally I changed the dye applet percentages just right to be very close match.

From there, I mixed the dye powders needed to creat the color all the same - 1 gram of dye powder to 100 ml of water.  This made it very easy to do the math.  If I needed 51% of turquoise, 30% of fuchsia, and 19% golden yellow, it was easy to measure 51 ml of the turquoise dye concentrate, 30 ml of fuchsia, and 19 ml of golden yellow into another container.   Voila!!!  There was the combination I’d need to dye my fabric. 

The amount of this mixed dye concentrate varied by fabric weight, but it was easy to measure the correct amount for each fabric from my customized dye concentrate container.

Is this for the faint of heart?  No, but it’s doable.  It does help to have some experience with dyeing.  I use scales and measure all my dye powder by weight.  It gives consistent results and satisfies the mad scientist that is hiding in a remote section of my psyche. 

By the way, I opened an account with Robert Kaufman just so I could try dyeing all these wonderful fabrics.  Everything was PFD, and I used 100% cotton for the first one, Panda for the second, Handkerchief Linen, then Essex, Voile, and Radiance.  PFD fabric is great - no pre scouring required and gorgeous results.

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008 Update

Yippee!!! My water system is fixed.  We didn’t need a new part after all.  The repairman said we had a power surge, and the regenerating switch on the charcoal filter wouldn’t turn off.  It just had to be reset and all is well with the water system now.  Oh happy days!!!

To celebrate, I mixed up the exact same dyes from the last experiment and am repeating the dye run - this time letting the fabric batch for 48 hours.  Hopefully, this will allow the turquoise dye to properly bond with the fabric.

I’m dyeing all sorts of new fabrics this time also.  My Robert Kaufman order arrived - all the fabric is listed on my business website - and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.  Plus I included a container of the same cotton I used in the last dye run.  It will be interesting to see if the longer batch time will make a difference in the final color.

Waiting for Sunday’s rinse, wash and boiling session is going to be hard.  

Hugs…

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008

No, I haven’t fallen off the earth, but I have been stopped dead in the water - literally.  My well water system is on the blink, and I can only use my water for toilet flushing and hand washing.  How frustrating is that?  PLENTY!!!

In the meantime, I’m looking at more colors and figuring out the math equations to try and reproduce some of them.  I dearly hope the repair to the system won’t take weeks.  The repairman had to call the factory to find out what part we “might” need to fix the problem.

Leigh asked a question on how I dyed the thread.  I wind the thread into hanks. tie them in 2 spots, and dip them into the dye concentrate.  When I dye bigger skeins, I tie them in 4 spots.  These thread skeins were wound around a 12″ wooden ruller, so were pretty small.

Hopefully, my water system will be repaired soon and I’ll be back dyeing soon.  I have some luscious new pfd fabric that arrived and can’t wait to see how it will dye.

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008 - Added Bonus

I forgot to mention that I’ve also been dyeing some DMC 12 wt cotton thread along with the silk and cotton fabric.

That first picture was put into the same container as the silk and cotton fabric.  I have yet a third color combination with these threads.   And they don’t remotely match the cotton fabric that was in the same container either.  So much for companion dyeing.

Discouraged, but not defeated, of trying to match colors I decided to play with the left over dye concentrate.  This had been mixed for 3 days and I wasn’t holding out any hope it would dye cotton very well even though the AC has been on in my house, so it’s been a steady 75.  Was I ever thrilled with this next group of colors:

While I’m still going to try and reproduce colors from photographs, it’s fun to just throw stuff in a dye container willy nilly.  I love these colors will enjoy using them in future projects.

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008 Second Set of Swatches

These are the results from the second dye day.  The first is a picture comparing the silk fabric using different fixatives:

The silk set with soda ash was dyed in a container with some cotton fabric and embroidery thread.  The silk set with citric acid was dyed all by itself.  There isn’t a huge difference and the color is not remotely the same as the cotton fabric.

This makes me think that the silk absorbs whatever dye hits quickest, and absorbs it deeply.  All the available molecules that can take color are filled with the quickest hitting dye, so there isn’t any more room for the slow moving dye molecules to attach to the fiber.  I’m no chemist, but this makes sense to me.

And here is a picture of the 100% bleached white Robert Kaufman PFD fabric.

 

These colors are a bit different from the Roclon muslin and I think portions of some of them are closer to matching the color in the photo.   I’m not trying to get a solid piece of fabric dyed to match the photo.  I am trying to get a piece of fabric that has the photograph’s color running through it.

I am weighing my fabric, using scales to accurately measure my dye powder, syringes and pipettes to accurately measure the dye concentrate, using the low water immersion dye process, and I boil all fabric after it has been rinsed and washed.  It’s as colorfast as it’s going to get.  

So, step 2 is done and I’m not quite there yet.  It’s back to the dye studio for me.

Dye Experiment - Summer of 2008 First Swatches

I couldn’t stop thinking about trying to match the color from a photograph with Procion MX dyes.  Not wanting to wait for my dye order from Dharma to arrive, I selected a new color - one that would require dyes I already own.  Here is the result:

It’s not a stellar success, but I learned quite a bit. 

1 - It shocked the bejeebers out of me that the 100% silk and 100% cotton muslin were such totally different colors.  They were in the same container.  I thought they’d be the same color.  Soda ash was used to set the dye, and I prefer using citric acid when I dye silk, so that will be tested tomorrow.  I’ll mix the exact same dye proportions and see if using citric acid to set the dye will yield different results.

2 - The 3 separate dyes were mixed at 1% strength - so the math wouldn’t be hard - and I used ProChem’s Turquoise MX-G, Fuchsia MX-8B, and Sun Yellow MX-8G.  The fuchsia hit with lightening speed.  The other colors didn’t have a prayer of keeping up - especially the nortoriously slow to move turquoise. 

In an attempt to control that issue, the bottom 2 samples were dyed at the exact same DOS and dye concentrate proportions as the 2 samples above them, but the bottom 2 were dyed in a 3 step process.  First they were dyed in the yellow - batched, rinsed and washed, then dyed with the red - batched, rinsed and washed, and finally dyed with the turquoise - batched all day vs the one hour for the other 2 colors, rinsed and washed.

I really like the way the colors blend when you dye with one color at a time.  Yes, it takes a lot longer, but to my eye, the bottom 2 swatches are drop dead gorgeous.  I wish you could see the complete swatches up close and personal.  They really are gorgeous.

3 - The colors separated even though the dye concentrate was moved around every 15 minutes.  If you want even color, you have the go the route Carol Soderlund does - stir, stir, stir that liquid, and keep stirring it till the batching is complete.  It really only takes about 10-15 minutes for the majority of the dye to attach to the cloth - except for that pesky turquoise.

4 - There was some DMC Cotton Perle 12 wt embroidery thread in each of the containers also, and they turned out entirely different colors from the fabrics.  As soon as they are spooled up, I’ll take a photo and put that on the blog too. 

After 10 years of dyeing fabric and yarn, the surprises are still coming.  It will be exciting to see if today’s colors will turn out differently.  Instead of using the Roclon muslin, I switched to Robert Kaufman’s Bleached PFD white fabric.  Starting out with a white fabric base will hopefully match the color in the photograph better.