Why should kids have all the fun with play dates? Artists need time to play and bounce ideas off each other too. Which is just what BLT did on a recent Sunday. Cynthia once again opened her home to let us play with dye. Oh, what fun we had!
Normally we would all bring our dyed fabric to the next meeting for show and tell. I will be on retreat at Caribou for our next meeting, so I am going to do my show and tell here so everyone gets to see it.
I started with 7 yards of fabric in half-yard cuts and six men’s athletic shirts. Since I was out of town when the others took Cynthia’s shibori dye class, she gave me a quick lesson in wrapping and tying and then turned me loose.
The purple and blue fabric and the blue and brown fabric were scrunched and tray-dyed. The yellow and brown fabric in the center was knotted in about three places on the diagonal.
I still had damp fabrics when it was time to pack up, so I put like-colored fabrics together in bags, knowing I might get some transference. I love the texture from the shirt. It reminds me of a fingerprint.
Two candy corn–inspired honeycomb pieces. I have no idea what I did with the blue one.
More honeycomb, this time in black and fuchsia. The blue and green was pinched, twirled, and tray-dyed.
More scrunching held together with rubber bands on the blue. The brown and black was getting toward the end, and I was getting tired, so I folded and wrapped it with string.
There is a gremlin that is disappointed in my laziness. But then if I weren’t lazy, he might not exist.
Yet more honeycomb. You get a different look when you use a half-yard instead of a fat quarter. Knots, this time in red and black. I like the look from the knots, but boy were they hard to take out!
This was sewn into a tube, put on a bucket, and scrunched down as tight as I could get it. I love the black to purple stripes. The orange and brown was the same idea only around a PVC pipe. The center fabric is another lazy one where I just folded, rolled, and tied.
I see a forest here.
Shirt twisted into a spiral with dye applied.
The finished shirt with a nice explosion of color.
Even my clean-up rags are interesting.
The shirts are on the left (minus one because I am wearing it) and fabric on the right all ironed and neatly folded.
The dye is packed up and ready to be put away. Now off to the studio with a new set of ideas bubbling around in my head. Thank you, BLT, for yet another inspiring day.