Another Dyeing Day

On Tuesday morning we began by washing out and ironing the fabrics that we had made on Monday. Elizabeth discovered that the Fuchsia dye that we had been using was not the correct type which explained why all of my pretty red accents had mysteriously disappeared!!

Here are the final fabrics that were dyed on Monday…..

The second workshop day began with Elizabeth showing various other methods of “resisting” the dye. She then told us to go to our tables and get started.

I tried lots of different methods and came up with some fun results. My first (and easiest) piece was simply folded lengthwise in a concertina fashion, and the folded into a small rectangle. I applied three rubber bands…..

….added dye to the edges (red on the corners and brown in the middle) and placed in a bath of water. The result was magnificent…..

Another easy design was made by folding the fabric into large triangles and then clipping various bits together using clothes pins.

It was soaked in a brown bath and came out with a wonderful symmetrical design with some blue highlights…..

The Turquoise and Orange make a wonderful brown, but apparently they dont “play well together” because the will often separate out into the two separate colors. This makes for some very interesting dye patterns!!!!

We also used clamps and tied bits with string……

….that came out like this….

We clamped folded fabrics between boards…..

….that looked like this…..

…..used machine stitching to create a line of resist……

…..voila…..

I love the air-pocket bubbles that formed.

…..and ended the day by making gradation dyes.

At the end of the day, I had washed out 6 pieces and had 21 more soaking a ready for the final wash. Here is the sum of 2 days of dyeing……

I want to tell you more about Arrowmont and will do so in a future post, but first I want to tell you about the bears!!! Almost everyday someone has seen a bear or had a bear amble out of the forest and visit the porch of their house. SO, as I walk back and forth before the sun comes up or around dusk I am constantly aware of my surroundings.

Now look at this photo……

Doesn’t that stump look like a bear cub…..especially when it is almost dark and you are already on “bear alert”!!!! I think that the person who put this here has a VERY sadistic sense of humor!!!!

And finally, what happens when you dont realize that there is a hole in your rubber glove????

….until tomorrow…….