o frivolous day

I played. Worked my way through about half the fabrics on the drying rack in my previous post, dye painting, waxing, screening, steaming. It was lovely...even if all the results were not. I didn't care because this is the first day in eons I have frittered away the afternoon just to see what would happen. If the truth be known, many of these were in triage; some still are, even after I worked on them.This one to the left, for example, blah. I screened with wax, stamped,overdyed,discharged, and the result is below.

A few more transformations....this was just plain turquoise.
I screened with wax and dye-painted back into it. This icky piece of red cloth was perfect for another wax experiment. I masked it with blue tape to see what would happen.
Love that blue tape!

This is not as dramatic as I had hoped it would be, but it is still a big improvement.
I may want to go back into it - and it has some nice bits. Needs more wax and more black dye.< And I couldn't resist deconstructing, especially after watching the students all weekend who were printing such divine fabrics. This looked better before I steamed and washed it.Hmmm..

Now I think this one is my favorite.Click on the detail below it for a good look. There are more pieces but I'll leave it here for the time being. Hopefully, these will inspire me.

discharge experiments

Today, I played. I visited my sick uncle and visited my mother. But before and after those visits, I decided it was a good day to do discharge so I set up my electric hotplate on the deck.

I tore 3 pieces from the same bolt of black. #1 went into the thiox bath, boiling away on the left. Later, I decided to try discharge paste and see what would happen if I steamed it; so much less nasty than ironing it! Here is the piece of black with blobs of discharge paste, wrapped with rubber bands and clamped. To tell you the truth, it needn't have bothered. Anyway, I wrapped the thing in newspaper and put it in to steam for a little while. Finally, I decided I should see what happens when I used bleach products on the same fabric. So I threw some Chlorox gel on the fabric. Nothing happned. Dishwasher gel. Not much happened. Finally a bleach & water bath. I HATE the smell of bleach. Soaked it in anti-chlor, washed it, and laid all 2 out together to photograph them. I had to take umpteen pix because the camera didn't get it right till the umpteenth-and-one shot. I don't know what it looks like on your computer screen, but the one on the left is the discharge paste: it is a lovely beige on the black. The middle one, of course, is the chlorine result: orange. And the one on the right discharged to a greenish-greyish color. Very interesting. I could have been more scientific about it, but I wasn't. I didn't do any direct application and ironing of either thiox or discharge paste: I might have gotten different results from the steaming process. And I would surely have gotten different results with different bolts of black. But there we are. I think I've gotten discharging out of my system for a little while.

a fun day

Happily, the predicted snow held off till five minutes after class was over today. Hopefully, all the travelers who came from afar have gotten home safely by now. I always worry.
Today was the soy wax workshop at the Arts Guild of Rahway, NJ and we all had fun.

Kendall Storm (below)

and Joanna van Ritbergen

drove down from Westchester County, NY and batik-d and painted their hearts out. I would never have guessed that this was the first time either of them had painted fabric, let alone doing batik. They waxed and painted and waxed and painted and waited till they got home to iron out the wax and wash the fabric - and I hope they will send me pictures when they are done.

Arlene Jacobs, who does all kinds of fiber work and is a member of the NY Textile Study Group, came out from NY City and was nonstop. I think she went home with more completed fabric than anybody! Here she is at work. Diane Carey came the longest distance: a couple of hours drive from somewhere in Northern Pennsylvania on the way to New York State. Diane has pretty much taught herself surface design and you can see the concentration she brings to her work.
And then we have the two musketeers: the famous artist-website designer,Gloria Hansen, and the famous blogger, Mary Manahan, who is looking impatiently at the softball she put into the wax, waiting for it to get hot enough to stamp with. It never did. But hey, you never know. You gotta try everything! Right, Mary? Later in the day, they insisted that I do 'show and tell' and give a lesson in how to wrap fabric for steaming, just in case they decided to use dyes the next time they do batik. Somebody grabbed my camera and made me SMILE while I was showing them this batik piece I did with kitchen implements. Joanna wanted to buy it but I wasn't ready to part with it. However, I will eventually be putting some fabrics for sale on my other blog "Off the Design Wall." I just haven't gotten to it. Been too busy keeping my studio clean. All in all, a good day. I got home before the snow started to stick, but we did stay in tonight and eat leftovers rather than get stuck trying to get up the various hills we have around here.

So glad that tomorrow is Sunday. I have 3 electric skillets that still have wax in them and I simply have to use them up.