Art Quilt Project: January 8 Shooting – Page 3

Shadow Fabric Part 2

I took the fabric I made last weekend (see previous post) and pinned it down today and stuck some more contact-paper shapes on top. Then I applied another layer of screen-printed dye paste. This is how it looked before the dye:

A close up…I’m a bit tired of cutting out the same shapes!

Once the first layer of dye dried, I carefully unstuck the shapes and reapplied them in different spots on the fabric and screen-printed on more dye. Here’s the yardage drying out on the patio. I don’t “proof” or “cure” or “batch” anything; most advice and tips on dyeing fabric calls for the dyed fabric to be sealed in a plastic bag overnight to get the maximum amount of dye. Sometimes I’ll let something sit that has a lot of nuance; but in this case, after a few hours in the sun this fabric was tossed in the wash. Once dried, this is how both pieces of fabric look:

Here’s a close up:

And another close-up:

I’m generally quite pleased. I’m able to see how everything is going to fit together now; I just need to keep at it and hope to have this project done by the end of summer.

Screen Printed Shadow Fabric

Above is the fabric I posted about last time; this is how it now looks with a fourth layer of dye, which I sponged on yesterday afternoon. Now it has even more depth.

I screen printed some new fabric today. I made stencils of 2 shapes–a man and a girl, I did a test run a few months ago–and cut them out of solid white contact paper and stuck them to some white cotton sateen:

Here’s a general idea of the yardage. This is one of two bath-towel-lined boards with cotton sateen pinned to the top; the fabric wasn’t entirely flat and secure the whole time, which is technically sloppy but makes for some interesting shapes:

And here is what the first layer of screen-printed dye looked like:

I waited for the first layer to dry, then carefully unpeeled the stencils and reapplied them to the stiff (the dye mix has sodium alginate, a thickening agent, which dries stiff) fabric. They aren’t quite as sticky as they are the first time, but with care they can be used twice. Which is good, because cutting those shapes over and over again gets a bit tiring!

This is what the fabric looks like after a second application of dye:

This is the same fabric, after being washed:

The second bit of yardage started yellow, too; this one had turquoise as a second layer and this is how it looks now:

From the detail below, which is looking pretty good I think, you can see a few examples of less-than-technically-perfect screen-printing technique; there are some blotches and variations in color.

I will screen-print both of these again with 2 different colors. But not until later this week. So far I think it’s looking pretty good.

Flour Paste Resist and Canning Beets

I took a few days off from work and managed to get a few things done. Such as cook all those beets.

I decided to make pickled beets. My secret weapon was to be horseradish root (see above) but the recipe I used called for so much apple cider vinegar, there really is not much else to taste.

Good thing I have another 10# of beets to pickle. I can make a sweet-and-sour pickle next time. And yes, all the jars below went into a hot water bath and all sealed very nicely. That’s 2 1/2 gallons of beets!

I also managed to get some fabric dyed for my January 8th Shooting quilt. I want to have a big piece of sunny-sky fabric; because, although the topic is not an upbeat one, the weather was really beautiful that day.

So here I have some cotton sateen clipped to a padded piece of big plywood. I’ve brushed flour paste in the shape of clouds on to the fabric; it dries yellow. I think I like flour paste resist so much because of my affinity for baking and cooking. I mean, how convenient, right?

After I sponged on the dye, and after the flour paste complete dried, this is what my dyed and puckered fabric looked like.

The first dye application is light; you can hardly see anything in the fabric below, but this is how it looked after the first application of dye, and with the cloud-shapes once again painted with flour resist.

This is how the fabric looks after 2 applications of dye. It’s getting better….

Once again, I dried the fabric, clipped it to the plywood and brushed on the flour resist. I put some soda ash water in a sprayer bottle and misted the fabric as I sponged on the dye; this seemed to fix the dye better than soaking the fabric in soda ash water and then letting it dry. That’s what I did the first time, which is why I think the initial dye application was so faint.

Here is the fabric, mostly dry (any gray is from dampness, not dye!); it’s almost done. I think it needs one more bit of dye and I need to tone down the yellow a bit.

Dye Painting Experiment

There’s a traditional quilt block I’ve always loved called “Memory”, and I made a few of these 12″ blocks for my first ever “sampler” quilt, which I made 16 years ago. I liked how the blocks, when placed together, created very different shapes:

I like the idea of using this block in my new project. Obviously, the name of the block–memory–is something that makes sense in the context of an art quilt about the January 8 shooting.

Rather than piece together fabric to make the quilt block, I drew the shapes on fabric using a disappearing fabric pen with the intention of painting the shapes with thickened dye. Instead of a 12″ quilt block, my version is about a 5″ square; I drafted multiple versions of it. So as to avoid confusion when I painted on the dye, I took a color-by-number approach and made sure each shape had a number so I’d paint it the right color:

This was a project I could do inside on a weeknight. I added dye powder to some print mix and started filling in the shapes. I waited for the dye to dry and then painted some more. I should add that I treated the fabric with a coat of Jacquard’s No-Flo first, which prevents colors from bleeding when painting dye on fabric:

Here’s the finished piece; it’s always brighter before you wash out the colors:

And here it is after I washed it:

One thing I’m not keen about is that the brush strokes are visible. In fact, I don’t like this at all. I’m already coming up with a different plan to get this design on fabric with dye with no brush strokes. I think I’ll have to use screen printing, and I’ll have to mask out the shapes with masking tape.