Last Saturday I spent the day at Making Ends Meet in Shelbyville, Kentucky where Darci McKinnon taught us about soy wax batik.
I took a picture of my friend Marilyn’s skillet because of her cool tools. The large spiral one I used on several of my pieces.
Leslie is the owner of Making Ends Meet.
It was lots of fun and by the end of the day I was a tired puppy. Here are a few of my pieces.
This first one was really interesting. This is the first look at it when the dye was still wet.
Darci came over to my table and suggested I wax over the whole piece and then submerge it in black dye. Sounded like a good idea. I painted wax over the whole piece, stuck it in the freezer for ten minutes, crunched up the fabric in my hands, and then soaked it in black dye bath for about an hour. I waited almost 48 hours to wash out and here is what I got.
The black dye seeped through the cracks to make an interesting pattern on the fabric. My only disappointment was the dyes did not come out as vibrant as I thought they would. More about that later.
These pieces I dyed years ago and I wanted to see how this technique worked over them. Again as with all of the pieces, it worked but the dyes were pretty washed out.
And my favorite:
It was a fun day and I came home with some interesting fabric. As I mentioned before, the dyes were not as vibrant as I’m used to and they are some of the same fiber reactive dyes I have used on my projects.
After much conversation with Marilyn and contacting my favorite expert on dyeing, Katherine Sands, I believe the soda ash water we added the dye to was exhausted by the time I used it. When I do this again, which I will when current projects are completed, I’ll first soda soak my fabric and then make a printing paste. When I took the screen printing class with Kathy, the dyes were beautiful with no wash out. That said, I did learn alot in this class and it was so much fun.
The night before I had the opportunity to spend some time with a friend I had not seen in years. Joy and I met at the Old Stone Inn in Simpsonville where we had a lovely dinner and great conversation. It was so good catching up with her.
I can’t forget to mention the dinner. I had their Chicken with Artichokes – Yum!
And speaking about food – I harvested our first asparagus yesterday!
Just enough for a taste at last night’s dinner. And there is more where that came from! Everything is starting to come up here so lots to do outside and the weather has finally changed to warm! Hope all is going well in your hood.
Love your soy wax experiments, and I agree – your colors should still come out very bright and vibrant. I almost always pre-soak my fabrics in soda ash solution, then dry the fabric before I apply the soy wax. Then once the wax has set, I just do a quick dip in the soda ash again, gently squeeze out the excess, then apply the dyes. I hope you do some more of this, as I think you will really love the results! BTW, I am jealous of your asparagus! I am getting a greenhouse put up next week, and maybe not this year, but next year I hope to try asparagus… one of my all-time fave veggies!
Judy, thanks so much for your procedure. I’ll do that next time.
Re the asparagus, when we moved in here in 2007, I was so upset because Dave was spending time planting the asparagus instead of unpacking. He was right to get it in because of having to wait a year for the harvest. Now we have a good patch which should feed us for the next many years.
The fabric is oh so nice, and lunch looks delicious too. When are you going to teach this for us to share with you?
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Dolly, Thanks! I just need a place and we’ll do it!!
I was wondering if you painted on the dye or did you submerge it? I figure you submerged it when you over-dyed it with black, but wondered if the first was painted on. Thanks Sandy
Hi Sandy! We painted on the dye with a soda ash solution. It was more than likely exhausted which is why most of my pieces were washed out. The first piece with the black was submerged.