Sunday, March 7, 2010

More progress....

Here I have added a bird cage which is part of the theme for this piece. Colour has been added to the lower half and also to the top left corner. Parts of the top left and bottom right (between the lines) then got discharged to give a contrast.

Then I painted the top right corner a dark brown which makes the central oval more prominent (more about this corner next blog).

After leaving any dye application to cold batch overnight, I always hose the cloth on my driveway (seen here from the deck above, and around, my studio). This hosing releases any surplus dye and avoids back staining particularly when I want areas to stay white. I don't pre-soak the cloth in a soda ash solution as the surplus dye will strike on the white areas. To avoid this I add the soda ash to the thickened dye solution instead. After hosing the cloth still goes through a washing machine cycle. Any one piece may have gone through up to 20 washes before completion.

All washed and ironed. More colour has been added to the top left and bottom right corners as well.
Yet more to do.....

3 comments:

  1. I'm enjoying your process.
    One question: is this turning out exactly as you had planned? I often have an idea in my head and then when I begin working on it, things change drastically for various and sundry reasons. Is that true with you as well?

    xo

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  2. This is coming along very nicely. Painting on fabric with dye is so much more demanding than working on canvas with paint which can be overpainted or scraped off. Have to be brave!

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  3. I have no idea what this is going to be but I'm fascinated by your process. I'm curious like Judy, is coming out as you wanted it to?

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