Out whole country has had a lot of snow this winter. At one point all of the lower 48 states had snow. The textile community made use of this phenomenon by using the snow to dye fabrics. I got on the bandwaggon with many other people and created some snow dyed pieces of my own. Most the the pieces are fat quarter size, with a few full yards and a couple odd size scrap pieces.
Archive for Dyeing
I have also been doing some fabric dyeing this summer. I have to do a lot more dyeing to get complete control of the colors I want. But in the meantime I’m having fun trying different things. Here are a few pics
Then I mixed all the colors together and I got this one. I liked the way it turned out, but will never be able to duplicate it. I have to find a special project for it. It reminds me of feathers in an Indian headdress.
I’ve also been doing rust dyeing. I learned that if you add tannins to the material it reacts with the rust to turn shades of gray and black. This looked better when wet. When dry, it is hard to see the grays. I used tea as a tannin, I think I need to find something stronger. I was also playing with discharging black fabric using bleach. That didn’t turn out the way I planned either, but it’s still a usable fabric. Unfortunately in my enthusiasm I forgot to wear an apron and I now have bleach stains on a favorite pair of shorts. Guess they are work shorts now.
Our neighbor has a walnut tree in their backyard. Every fall the nuts drop in the alley and everywhere. This year I decided to try making walnut liquor (not a tasty treat) to use for dyeing fabrics. This is a picture of my neighbors walnut tree and the nuts laying on the ground. The nuts look kind of like golf ball size green apples.
Walnut tree
Walnuts on the ground
I gathered a bunch of the nuts that had fallen in the alley and put them in a bucket of water to soak. This softens the husk for peeling.
After soaking about a day, I separated the husks from the nuts. The husk is the part that has the dye in it. The peeled husks are on the left in the photo and the nuts in the shell are on the right.
Nuts soaking
Shelled nuts
I then cooked the husks in water. While they were cooking, I prepared some fabric for dyeing. One fabric as white and one was cream colored. The fabric is soaking in soda ash and alum to make it accept the dye better. At this point you can add things like rusty metal to the bath to get color variations. Then the fabric is cooked in the walnut dye bath (or otherwise known as walnut liquor) until the desired effect takes place. When I was done dyeing this fabric I poured the walnut juice into a couple of quart jars. From what I understand this can be kept indefinitely. If mold grows on top, just skim it off before you use it again.
Cooking walnut husks
Preparing fabric for dye
Dyeing fabric
The next thing to do was decide what to do with my dyed fabric. It turned out to be a nice soft brown/tan color. Then I went into our backyard and collected some grape leaves. It painted the back of the leaves (where all the veins are) with fabric paint, then stamped the leaves onto my dyed fabric.
Painted leaves
Fabric with leaf prints
Here is a picture of a finished project using the above fabric. I embellished some other leaves made up of tiny scraps of fabric and quilted the stamped leaves with a metallic thread. The finished size is about 7″x11″
Creative Every Day
- Creative Every Day Check-In: April 15 – 21 April 15, 2013
- Creative Every Day Check-In: April 8 – 14 April 8, 2013