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

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.

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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.

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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?