Spinning Study Group at Local Cloth 2020

List of fibers and their sources

(information as of 2-3-2021)

Local Cloth Spinning Study Group Blog

Fiber farmers in the WNC Local Cloth Area

List of Fiber Samples for Spinning Study Group

Sept 21, 2020

Alpaca, Last Penny Farm

Mohair, Good Fibrations

Montadale, Windy Wool Windings

Shetland, a farm in Henderson County

Oct 20, 2020

Blue Ridge Mountains Blend #1,  Local Cloth (30% Montadale, 25% Shetland, 25% Alpaca, 20% Mohair)

Blue Ridge Fine #1, Local Cloth (60% Montadale, 40% Alpaca)

Jacob, Hobbyknob Farm

Lincoln, Hobbyknob Farm

Nov 20, 2020

Romeldale, CVM Windy Wool Windings

Tunis, Wellspring Farm, Yancey Co, NC

3/4 Blue Faced Leicester x 1/4 Leicester Longwool (first shear), Love Handle Farm, Alexander, NC

3/4 Cormo x 1/4 Corriedale, Martha Owen Woolens

Dec 28, 2020

Dorset, Brian Grimm, Blackberry Ridge, Southwest VA

Icelandic, Katie Gaddy, Hidaway Farm 

Cormo top, Sebette Hamil, Leicester, NC

Romney, Barnardsville 2019

Jan 26, 2021

Teeswater, Dry Creek Naturals, Taylorsville, GA

Llama, Peace of Eden Farm, Madison, NC

Merino, Khakalaki Farm, Trenton, SC

Black Shetland, Sourwood Fiber Farm, Scott Spell, Fletcher, NC

I have mentioned Local Cloth, an Asheville fiber group supporting artists and farmers, in a previous blog (Nov 20, 2020). Local Cloth just sent out a member survey with questions particular to this past covid year. One of the questions was “Did you acquire any new hobbies this year?” My enthusiastic answer was blogging and hand spinning wool (double exclamation points, smiley face)!

I have always loved anything to do with wool and knitting. I sometimes become bored so I tend to switch projects and work in parallel on 3-4 projects. I also take workshops (from Local Cloth) or learn by videos or books. I often lack patience to follow complicated patterns, however I love to design and make things to my specifications and preferences. Since a teenager, I have tried to make many kinds of things, but a lasting interest is working with wool. I think I speak for other knitters when I say that a display or basket full of beautiful yarns makes my heart race; I rush over to look and feel. Visual and tactile pleasures—please drag me out of the shop! Hence, the famous stashes so many of us create.

I am a newbie at spinning. After a lesson and some internet learning, I jumped in at the deep end by joining Local Cloth’s Spinning Study Group last fall. This is an opportunity to be around experienced spinners and fiber farmers (virtually on Zoom at present), to experience and learn about spinning fibers obtained from different sheep breeds and local farmers, and to enjoy spinning in the company of others. Judi Jetson gave me my first (socially distanced, outdoors) spinning lesson at her home in Weaverville. Judi, the driving force behind the creation and development of Local Cloth and the current president, is very generous with her time and talents. By the way, I’ll trade ya—something I made for something you made or taught me! Contact me!!

During the Spinning Study Group sessions, we look up only occasionally at the computer screen while spinning. I learned from leading Local Cloth’s Virtual-Handwork Circle that my screen grabs are much better when I say to the group “Look up and smile”! (Photo 1). Spinners like to spin together indoors or outdoors, at your house or mine. Spinning alone indoors on a rainy day is also wonderful. In the spinning study group, each 2 hour monthly session involves spinning, discussing, and characterizing four different yarns from local farmers. To see my photos of the fibers before spinning check out the Local Cloth blog by clicking Learn More. To see how my yarns look and how they knit up, stay tuned!

Photo 1. Spinning Study participants on 12-28-2020.

Unique results of ice-dyeing

Remember the Sunrise blog series, photographs, linen napkins, and cotton quilted placemats: July 4-19, 2020? The linen napkins were very popular, I only have two left!! I was asked if I could make 8 more just like those in my Etsy shop SusettesHandDyedArt. Confidently, I responded yes!

I had previously made linen Sunrise napkins and the cotton Sunrise placemats on two different days and they came out very similar in appearance. The cotton quilted placemats were more orange than pink, though, whereas the linen napkins were more pink and lighter in general (Photo 1).

Photo 1.. Ice-dyed cotton for placemats (left) and linen (right) from first Sunrise dyeing sessions.

That the colors might come out differently was not a surprise to me for several reasons. The first is that ice dyeing is a bit imprecise, and I didn’t even measure, I only approximated the amounts and positions on the ice covering the cloth.

In addition, the same dye on two different fabrics can give different results (Photo 1). I dyed two different fabrics, a stretchy rayon knit for the lower portion for the dress, and a heavier cotton knit for the top part of the dress in the same dye bath (granny apple from Dharma (PR158)). The cotton knit came out blue-green and the stretchy rayon knit more granny apple green. A reason for this difference between the two fabrics, is at least partially that I used a fold resist method for the cotton knit pattern. In this case, the dye diffused toward the center between the plexiglass squares; the turquoise dye migrated through the cloth at a faster rate (see folded method in Photo 2). I used a a tied resist method for the stretchy rayon knit, thus, the majority of the fabric was exposed directly to the dye bath. The color was uniformly taken up except where the dye was excluded at the tied portions. The rayon fabric was finished using a leaf stamp and heat set pigment. So the overall dress appearance is quite a bit more appealing because of the differences in method of resist and uptake of the dye into the fabric. Of course in this case I was surprised but delighted by the differences it being the first experiment of this kind.

Photo 2. Dress made from hand dyed fabric.

Photo 3. Preparation for dyeing rayon (tied) and cotton knit (folded).

Coming back to the linen napkins and more recent experiments on color combinations, I have dyed 5 different lots of linen since the first lot using folding resist and ice dyeing techniques.

With each new color combination and folding experiment, the joy of ice-dyeing comes from the beautiful color combinations as well as surprise and delight felt upon seeing the outcome: the unveiling! The Christmas present or birthday unwrapping feeling, particularly when you are a child. Ice dyeing can give both subtle or bright, bold results based on a number of factors. These factors determine reproducibility (the ability to precisely repeat the results). It helps to be a scientist to know the detailed recording of steps is required for in duplicating experiments, but that isn’t sufficient. To understand the dyeing process thoroughly, one should have training in physics and chemistry to understand diffusion rates and dye chemistry. I think about dyeing fabric as a playful enterprise and not necessarily striving to reproduce a previous result, although the latter requires careful note taking in order to fill an order on my Etsy shop if someone requests more of a particular color lot.

The results of a few dyeing sessions are shown in Photos 4-5.

Photo 4. A Sunrise linen napkin against linen dyed with a different dye combination.

Photo 5. A Sunrise linen napkin (Bottom), a pinker linen napkin using different dyes (Top), both against linen dyed using ice dyeing then overdying using ice dyeing but with a different set of starting colors.

Check out my Etsy shop for the latest in ice-dyed heavy linen napkins!

Learning to spin wool

I have found that even though I have many interests such as knitting, dyeing wool yarn, dyeing cottons and linens, quilting and making items for home and sale, I have always thought (romantically!!!) about spinning wool. One of the lists of how to avoid depression while staying at home during covid-19 is to learn a new thing. Well, I am happy to report it works! The process of learning how to spin has sparked my interest, imagination, and creativity for all my activities. I am more cheerful. So, like knitting, spinning is therapeutic.

Last fall I bought a Baynes spinning wheel from Judi Jetson of Local Cloth. Judi seems to collect all kinds of equipment on her fiber journey, some of which she uses for teaching. This Baynes spinning wheel is no longer produced, but it is a great portable wheel one can bring along for outdoor spinning parties more than 6 feet apart! I really do look forward to the day I can trot down to the Local Cloth studio to meet in person with fellow spinners. The Baynes has Scotch tension plus two whorl sizes to regulate the speed of the wheel. Ian Baynes, who worked for Ashford with the re-emergence of interest in spinning in the 1960’s, developed his own spinning wheel in the 1970’s in New Zealand. A marvelous blog detailing the history of spinning wheels in New Zealand can be found here. The photograph below was reproduced from pacificwoolandfiber.com, a supplier of spinning wheels and looms.

Ian Baynes developed this spinning wheel in the 1970’s following a re-emergence of interest in spinning.

Judi gave me an outdoor spinning lesson and some samples for practice and I was off and going. I started with a sample of Montedale from Windy Wool Windings from which I formed a two-ply using an unnamed (my bad) undyed wool. Since I didn’t know about Windings Per Inch (WPI) and Twists Per Inch (TPI) and such, I failed to record any significant details of what I had done besides the fact that I hand carded and made rolags to spin.

So, practice practice practice and now I had to learn a bit about finishing yarn and knitted pieces. Never, or almost never, in my knitting world had I bothered to block finished pieces, and initially spinning wool I skipped it. I am now learning what the benefits are! And, Judi admonishes me, always finish yarn after spinning. I learned another tidbit the hard way; if there is too much grease in the yarn, it will be hard to spin and hard to separate out bits of yucky stuff. Soon I will know all the words to describe yucky stuff, but suffice it to say, I have learned to pre-wash small portions of fleece or fiber that arrives too sticky.

I have settled on a washing and finishing standard. That is to say, I have a method that seems to work that may be modified whenever I learn otherwise. The process of experimenting and learning from others allows a progression with continuous improvement. In terms of science, scientific hypothesis-generation and experimentation leads along a path of discovery. There is no absolute truth in each conclusion. Science never stands still. It is about a consensus that is continually supplanted by input of new data collected using new methods. Any consensus is expanded upon by a competing array of scientists to move the conclusions forward toward relative truth. Most Americans are poorly educated in science and fail to realize this. And we all love to be a little fanciful. Ok in art? Ok in craft? Ok in science?? I think not.

Was that an “aside” or what!?

WASHING, FINISHING, BLOCKING

Step 1: Check for excess grease in raw samples, if present, soak fiber in hot water with a squirt of Ivory liquid soap for 1 h and then gently rinse 2-3X with cool water. (X=times)

Step 2: After spinning, repeat the wash: soak fiber in hot water with a squirt of Ivory liquid soap for 1 h and then gently rinse 2-3X with cool water. Gently thwap against side of deep sink 2X then orient the skein 180 degrees and thwap twice more. (Thwap-sling in a circular motion landing the length of the fiber skein along the side of the sink). Hang to dry.

Step 3: To finish the knitted item, either 1) steam iron the (dry) piece with cloth in between the piece and the iron, or 2) repeat step 2 without thwaping. Place between two towels and press the water out. Pin to keep in place. Results: The iron tends to flatten the piece whereas the soaking in hot, soapy water and drying flat (with or without pins) leads to a more natural look. In both cases, the fibers are set into place.

FIRST EFFORTS

In my last Susette’s Hand Dyed Art blog of November 20, 2020, I highlighted Local Cloth and the fiber farmers within the Local Cloth “Fibershed”, approximately 100 mile radius from Asheville. There, you can find the list of farmers that participated in the Fiber Farmers Day in September. When I went, I bought lots fiber to spin: Cormo, Cormo/Leceister Long Wool (LLW), LLW, Romney, and Shetland Tebo/Tete.

In my first efforts, spinning through finished product, I generated a hat and two headbands. These were made from Shetland Tebo/Tete wool from Sourwood Fiber Farm, knitted on size 8 needles, and dyed with indigo. Shetland is wonderfully springy!

I rummaged through the wool I have collected over the years when I had a vague notion of felting. I had bought a few things just because; it was so pretty. In those days, when I lived in Maryland, I was an avid attendee of the annual Maryland Wool and Sheep festival. So, now I have a small container with rabbit angora which I bought to appease my small son whom I had dragged to the festival with me! He could open the box and feel the softness. I have about 4 oz of dyed roving. After moving to North Carolina and attending Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF), I have 3 bags full of merino in beautiful brown tones.

I pulled out the dyed roving, spun it and made a hat and a cabled headband. Wish I could find a picture of the finished pieces!

Next blog I will tell you about the Fiber Spinning Study group and me drowning in attempts to organize everything!

Quilting Finale on Sunrise

I am almost but not quite finished with the Sunrise placemats and napkins. There are a dozen of each, you know, so I have some excuse.

I am only almost finished because there are just too many things to do.

Unfinished projects might have something to do with the fact that I can be forgetful. For example, I might forget that I had been sewing, go upstairs to get something to drink, and then start the laundry, forgetting that I was in the middle of something else. That usually happens when I am in the phase of rote sewing rather than creating or deciding what to do next on a piece.

Or, I waste the creative bit of the morning and early afternoon by the need to do the horrible old-folks-early-in-the-morning-covid-timeslot grocery store run. For me, this is horrible because I must rush: rush through coffee, have a small bite to eat to hold me over, gather the protective gear, coffee to-go, and drive extra far to a larger grocery store where they actually wear masks. I feel safer there not only because the staff have the right idea about the masks (well mostly, there are those two chatterboxes cutting fruit for the plastic containers; I stay well clear of them), but also because the store is huge. Heck, if I go early Sunday morning, I am almost the only customer there! The terrible draw back on Sunday is that you can’t buy beer or wine until after 12. North Carolina. I remember Chatham County in the 70’s. Very dry place.

It has taken weeks, but I am slowly acclimating to the new grocery store. I enter the parking lot, put on the mask, pull out my cell phone and change the setting so that it never goes to sleep because when it goes to sleep the face recognition doesn’t work because of the mask. And begin the slug through a gigantic, week-long grocery list.

40 minutes into shopping and I am still running back to the beginning veggie section or cheese section having forgotten yet another item. To me, it is a modern miracle that I can say to a small round tower, Alexa, put cheddar cheese on the grocery list while my gloved hands wash newly dyed textiles in the sink.

Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t Ingles make an app to supplement Alexa’s app? Instead of listing the groceries in categories like Baking and Cooking or more informatively “Other” , an Ingles app would match grocery items on the list to their position in the store the aisle number!

I am not an early morning person. I do not like to plan meals in advance; we used to shop 3 or even 4 times a week, a habit left over from when we lived in a denser population setting. So, instead of planning I pick a variety of 3-4 fresh veggies, buy a bunch of different frozen fishes (during old peoples hours, the fresh fish counter at Ingles is rarely open), buy a lot of milk and cheese, get a treat, buy seeds and nuts, random other stuff. Get home and sigh. Good news though! We can drive to a fabulous fresh seafood store Mother Ocean Market on Merrimon, and guess what is right next door????! The Hop Ice Cream, that’s what.

Mornings are the best times to be creative, to think. This comes after retired-person sleep until you wake and feel like getting up and a relaxing coffee, reading time. Grocery shopping should be late in the day. I resent Covid-19. We all do. Our new reality. But I will still go to the grocery story early because I do not want to catch that nasty virus. I was fortunate to hear Dr. Fauci speak to the students at Georgetown via Zoom the other day. He explained that previous viruses outbreaks were due to viruses that either spread rapidly in humans but were not causing serious disease, OR, didn’t spread in humans having been contracted from contact with animals and were extremely serious medically. SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand spreads rapidly in humans AND has extreme medical outcomes in people. This is the explanation of the Covid-19 pandemic relating to the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2.

Well, I did divert a little into non-fiber territory. What were we talking about before? Oh yes, I want to tell you about the nearly completed Sunrise placemats and napkins. Change that. It is late in the evening. I want to show them to you.

Linen Sunrise napkins. Also can be used as placemats.

Quilted Sunrise placemat.

Quilted Sunrise placemat.

Quilted Sunrise placemat.

Quilted Sunrise placemat.

Small plates, bowl and fork with Linen Sunrise napkins.

Sunrise: shockingly bright or subdued colors?

From our house, we see sunrises in the southeast. They can be so different. You don’t know how many pictures I have taken, running out to the deck to capture a picture of the sunset, mountains in the distance, and our trees in the foreground. I don’t know how many times, but currently on my phone I have maybe 20K photos I have taken over the last 13 years. I keep what might be called a photo journal of my processes, the things I make, and visual frames imagined as I walk down the road that drive me to grab my iPhone and capture bits of the beautiful surroundings here on the mountain.

Sunrise.

The most intense sunrise has shockingly bright oranges and reds, whereas, when sunrise is more progressed, the colors become muted. The clouds add such a different element in the image as well as the selection of trees, particularly in the fall and winter when the intricate patterns of branches can be seen.

Photo 1. Sunrise with trees in Leicester, NC

Photo 2. Sunrise with clouds in Leicester, NC

Photo 3. Sunrise with trees, mountain profile, and a beautiful blue sky.

Photo 4. Sunrise with muted colors, streaks of clouds, trees, and mountain profile in the distance.

Photo 5. Late sunrise with muted blue ridge mountains and a pink and pale blue sky.

Exciting reds and oranges or muted, soft, peaceful colors. Right? You see it I am sure. I myself can’t resist capturing images of intense colors, but the photos I prefer to look at and perhaps see on the wall are the muted ones. Since I make calendars using my photos, I see each image a month at a time and have plenty of time to enjoy. This year I saw everything again as I failed to make a new calendar. More on calendars at another time.

My next piece, I decided therefore, was to create something based on sunrises, but one that I could enjoy making and that made me feel at peace. I also wanted to make something that could be used daily and enjoyed, if not by me then by others.

1 dozen linen napkins and 1 dozen quilted placemats to match.

Cutting the fabric, dyeing the fabric, stitching and fraying the napkins, silkscreening, putting together the placemats with batting in place, and more before finally quilting. FUN! Something really to look forward to in the mornings.

We have been talking about ice dyeing in our virtual handwork circle at Local Cloth and several in our group are experienced with this technique. I love it and have done pieces before for quilts and wall hangings such as the piece in the next photo which hangs in my studio. My mentor Karen Bell, a fiber artist in Canton, NC and a fellow banjo player and I enjoyed an afternoon of wax resist, otherwise known as batik. My starting material was a large piece of ice dyed fabric.

Photo 6. Batik wax resist on ice dyed muslin followed by navy over dyeing. Purple basis, natural dyed wool was used to crochet the edges and suspend the batik from a hardy hibiscus stem collected from my garden.

So jumping in with both feet, I cut yards of heavy linen and yards of cotton sheeting and proceeded to ice dye them in similar colors, I hoped. The colors on the linen napkins would be similar but not exactly the same as those on the cotton sheeting destined for the placemats. To make things more interesting, I decided to shibori fold the material prior to ice dyeing.

Photo 7. Top view of ice dyeing at the beginning of the process.

Photo 8. Side view of ice dyeing at the beginning of the process.

Brace yourself. I am happy for me (out of time) yet sorry to say for you (what happens next), this blog will be continued next week!……………………

It is all about the surprise, first seeing unfolded wet and then after washing and drying. You will see that and more. Silkscreening and whatever else I dream up.

Susette

The Finale of my First Quilt using Silkscreen Tree No. 4

In this blog entry, I will detail the quilting of this piece and discuss texture, stamping, close and far viewing of the piece, and ranges of color tones and values (light and dark).

I am not satisfied with this piece because it did not bend to my will (haha). I like it, it’s just not what I expected (as usual) and it is finished. I think making things with fabric, paint, silkscreening, dyes, stamping, and other techniques and tools is a bit like a mystery story, but lived and then written down later in a blog. I just went through another Agatha Christie read-it -again, see-it-on-PBS-again, again (that means, I wait a year or two and try to forget some of the plot and especially who done it, then enjoy it again. Repeat. Eventually though, I can offer up quotes before they are spoken or I get to that page). Now I am recycling back through Ruth Rendall and Peter Lovesey stories. I also love Dorothy Sayers, George Simenon, Ann Cleeves More suggestions please, and I hope I haven’t read them yet.

If you recall, we left off last session with none of the color discharge (color removal) attempts working for either the blue or green dyes that I used. Before washing out the dried alginate thickener after the last color discharge attempt, I decided to stamp the edges with a stamp I designed. The stamp (pictured in Photo 1 and 2) is my interpretation of looking into a dense stand of trees and branches. In Photo 3, you can see the results of two stamps: red edging and a red hawk, as well as the beginning of quilting on the piece.

Photo 1. Hand carved stamp designed by Susette to represent trees in a forest and to be used for edges and borders.

Photo 2. The linoleum top is mounted on a pressed board piece to strengthen and make holding and stamping easier. This particular stamp has been used for navy in the past, but unused would be all of one color.

Photo 3. The forest stamp was used to stamp transparent red paint end-to-end around the piece. The whole width was not painted as you can see from residual paint on the stamp in Photo 1. This piece also shows my hawk stamp. At this point the fabric is overlaId onto cotton batting with another piece of fabric at the bottom of the sandwich, ready for quilting. I have just begun to machine quilt the tree trucks in red and between the trees in white and light blue thread.

The quilting part is really fun because you can choose colors, use fancy stitches or not, and use a free-hand quilting attachment. But the key is the quilting foot or “walking foot”. Miracle of miracles. Better than sliced bread. With the old machines and no attachments, the fabric layers slide and bunch, even if you spray adhesive between the layers. The newest $$$ machines have a design where the shaft does the job, don’t ask me how. My Janome machine has a separate walking foot that you can use. The feed dogs pull the fabric through from the bottom, and the foot attachment has two rows of teeth that move up and down and simultaneously pull the fabric through at the top! Makes everything better in a machine quilting piece. Sometimes though, hand quilting is the choice, you can express different emotions through texture, color, and patterns.

ASIDE: Here is a hand quilted piece I did recently using my favorite colors. This piece was shibori folded to dye and then silkscreened using first blue ink, and then discharge color paste. This blue-green dye mixture discharges really well leaving a slight blue cast (depends on the turquoise that doesn’t really discharge much).

Photo 4. Eddy the Cat with Birds Linen Placemat. 2020. The blueish green was achieved using a shibori folding technique; the blue birds and the pale birds were silkscreened with heat-set dye and color discharge, respectively. Hand quilted with machine stitched edging.

Now, I want to show you some photos of the quilting process and my thoughts as I was deciding on color and pattern. In Photo 5, straight stitching red up the trunks followed the major branches out to the tips to add bark texture. Then, I used free form quilting to fill spaces between trees representing the sky. To give the suggestion of white clouds, I used a larger stitch and white thread compared to the light blue for the sky spaces. Combined with a more crooked meandering of stitches and bigger spaces between the lines I created fluffy clouds. The the relatively brighter and looser stitching sets the clouds apart from the sky. What do you think? Did it work? Up close I thought I was doing rather well (Photo 5)

Pinning it to the wall and standing back, not so well; you can't even see the stitches at a distance and they certainly did not succeed in distinguishing the clouds from the sky. Originally, I had planned on discharge to light the sky (the greens and blues) leaving some leafy greens behind. The trunks silkscreened with heat-set acyrlic fabric paints are not affected by discharge techniques.

Photo 5. Quilting trees, clouds, and sky seen between trees.

At this point the only remedies were to use white and light blue to paint something to suggest sky and give contrast when viewing at a distance to complement the hawk and the trees that can be seen easily. So here goes, I painted some on the trunks near the edges to add depth to the picture and dots of white and blue for contrast in the sky. Look at the close, mid, and far views of the final piece in Photos 6-8 below.

Photo 6. Close up view of the final piece with vine, sky, tree stitching and painted highlights.

Photo 7. Mid distance view of the final piece.

Photo 8. The final yet finished piece!

P.S. Here is what the back looks like! TaDa!

Photo 9. The reverse of the finished piece.

Silkscreening, dyeing, quilting, but phooey, no color discharge.

PUTTING COLOR ON CLOTH

Back to writing about the silkscreening project of Tree No. 4 after my last science-inspired post.

I began with an experiment in silkscreening using three pieces of cotton fabric. I wanted to compare several methods to solve two issues.

The first issue is that it is difficult to control is the rate and pressure of pulling the ink across the screen. Experience helps of course, but once the ink is deposited there isn’t much you can do if you got too little or too much. I often get too much.

The second issue is I acquired a taste for texture in the trees through a serendipitous silkscreen painting: my Silkscreen Tree No. 3. Now, I want to look for other ways to achieve a similar result.

_____

ASIDE:

Let me back up and explain that when I made Silkscreen Tree No. 3 I made a happy mistake. That’s another way of saying thank heaven for serendipity.

ser·en·dip·i·ty /ˌserənˈdipədē/ noun

1. the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

   "a fortunate stroke of serendipity"

The silkscreen serendipity on Tree No. 3 is as follows; I pulled the blocking solution (insoluble red screen filler) on the wrong side of the silkscreen - opposite to that where the drawing solution (soluble blue screen filler) was located. Then, realizing my error, I pulled the red screen filter solution on the correct side covering the fully dried blue solution. When after drying, I rinsed the blue solution away, some of the red filler solution stuck unpredictably in places along the tree trunks. This looked great upon silkscreening some fabric!! Much more interesting than solid trees with no texture. A mistake and serendipitous finding; but can it be repeated? Maybe, but I chickened out trying this method on the next silkscreen I made, Silkscreen Tree no. 4.

If you are wondering how the silkscreen process works in more detail, check out the Speedball how-to videos and representative screen shots I made (Photos 1-2):

Applying drawing fluid video

Photo 1. A screen shot taken from the Speedball video on screen drawing.

Applying screen filler ink video

Photo 2. A screen shot taken from the Speedball video on applying screen filler.

_____

BACK TO THE STORY of Silkscreen Tree no. 4

The screening process I experimented with this time was to silkscreen ink onto a piece of cloth (cloth piece no. 1) using the traditional method of pulling the squeegee loaded with ink across the screen which was pressed close to the fabric. For cloth piece no. 2, I inverted the just-screened cloth piece no. 1 loaded with ink onto a fresh cloth, piece no. 2, and gently rubbed the back of the two-cloth sandwich. This resulted in excess ink transferring from piece no. 1 to piece no. 2. Seeing that there was still extra ink on piece no. 1, I repeated the procedure on a fresh cloth, piece no. 3. Cloth piece no. 2 has some texture but no. 1 is solid.

Photo 3. Silkscreen cloths from upper right then counter-clockwise: no. 1, no. 2, no. 3.

As is apparent from Photo 3, cloth no. 2 is lighter, appears as a reverse image, and has some texture along the tree. Cloth no. 3 has much fainter trees. I then dried the silkscreen pieces but did not iron them to heat set the color to make it permanent. I wanted to wash some out in a washing step to see if that would add some visual texture to piece no. 1.

Next, I dyed the fabric using Cerulean Blue (see Photo 4). I planned to discharge the color partially from the center portion by stamping a leaf pattern using color discharge paste. This would give the appearance of bits of the sky showing through leaves, or so I hoped. But nothing happened (as seen after rinsing).

Ok, it didn’t work so maybe the solution was too old. So I prepared fresh discharge paste and painted the mixture over the whole middle portion. This time, I was stunned to see the blue turn instantly to yellow (Photo 5). Fearing the worst, I rinsed the cloth and dried it. Surprise: the yellow turned back into the original blue (not shown).

I gave up color discharge on Cerulean Blue.

Instead, I decided to overdye the piece with Granny Apple Green in a shibori folding method (Photo 6). Then I could color discharge the green to reveal the blue and the illusion of sunlight filtering through green leaves with some blue sky visible.

Photo 4. Fabric piece no. 1 overdyed with blue.

Photo 5. Still wet, painted with discharge paste, the blue turned rapidly to yellow/colorless. The silkscreen paint is a heat set paint and not subject to color removal.

Photo 6. Overdyed with Granny Apple Green dye in a shibori folding pattern. The blue from the first round of dyeing shows through in places.

I couldn’t help myself; one more try with the color discharge using the leafy sky stamp (Photo 7)!! This time I should see blue instead of green. The white pattern you see in Photo 7 is dried alginate (I took the picture before washing the fabric).

Photo 7. Color discharge using a leafy sky stamp carved by Kathryn Sandberg, a scientific and artistic collaborator. This image was made after ironing to activate the color discharge. but before washing. Part of the white pattern shown here is dried sodium alginate which is used as a thickener for stamping. True results discovered after washing revealed no color discharge again!! It would have been pretty!

Failure again. Could I have forseen all of this? Did I prove to myself that Cereulean blue and Granny Apple Green are resistant to color discharge? Yes. I might have guessed if I had thought/remembered to consult an old color/ color discharge test I had done. I expected at least to see green turn to blue. You decide! (Photo 8 has the evidence).

Photo 8. The TOP photo is the color version and the BOTTOM photo is the same image converted to gray values to make value comparisons easier. The arrows on the left point to the stripe of Cerulean Blue while the arrows on the right point to Granny Apple Green.

Next blog, I will detail the quilting of this piece and discuss texture, stamping, close and far viewing of the piece, and ranges of color tones and values (light and dark). See you then! Comments are allowed on this post but I am struggling with how to make the comment box appear at the end of the blog!! Maybe one or another of my sons can help! Good excuse to call them right?

Photographs that document and inspire me

In my previous blog on May 24, 2020, I neglected to show you the photograph that I used to inspire the drawing. Oh dear. :)

Well, I am not a sit-in-the-woods sketcher myself, mostly because I usually am wandering around in my yard or on a hike with others grabbing shots. It won’t surprise you to learn that i have thousands of pictures on my iPhone. When I bought a new phone, I picked it for its two lens system. I knew that I would always have my phone with me but rarely would think to bring my old digital camera. Wow, wasn’t that a savings, one new iPhone instead of iPhone + new digital camera! My old camera takes great pictures except when it misbehaves mechanically.

As the four of us were wandering the woods in Brampton, near Chesterfield, England, I looked up in the woods and this is what I saw.

That same trip, that same day in April, I also took this photograph.

This is the sister photograph to the one above, in Old Brampton.

This last image also inspired a silkscreen that I have used extensively in my art pieces. If you check out the images from the gallery “2017-2019 Hand Dyed Art” you will see! I show you some below for your immediate gratification (and mine).

A recent 2020 quilt containing my “Silkscreen Tree no. 3”

A recent 2020 Wall Hanging quilt.

And to be complete, I will show you the actual silkscreen.

First Brampton Silkscreen . Tree #3. Old Brampton.

Stay tuned for the next blog where I will go into what I have done so far using Silkscreen Tree No. 4 in terms of dyeing, overdyeing, and other successful and not-sucessful steps I have experimented with!