Adventure Quilter

My primary objective during a recent dying session was to improve many ugly or high contrast fabrics. This photo shows about half of the fabrics I intended to improve.

Some of them look fine, but have a lot of contrast in them. Now that I’ve been working with these hand dyed fabrics for a while, I’m finding that working with these can be challenging. Others are nearly solid and need to have some pattern added. Finally, some are hideous and merely need to be mostly obscured.

Because dyes are transparent, you always have to consider how colors will combine when one is applied over another. I gave this a lot of thought. The fabric below was pale blue and white. Pretty, but not something I thought I’d use. So, I over dyed it with a dull yellow. As you can see, that turned the blue to green, just as I expected.

And here’s the whole collection, after a week’s worth of effort. I think I did about 40 pieces.

Actually, there are another 6 or so that turned out really ugly. (Chartreuse, when I was aiming for a simple yellow-green.) They’ll be in the “needs improvement” category for my next dye session.

Now, I’m on to using these fabrics and it sure is fun!

Ellen Lindner

My recent dye session was devoted almost exclusively to improving ugly prints. That generally meant over dying with a solid color, or stenciling on a new one.

Take this little piece, for instance. It was originally an ugly yellow-green that I didn’t think I’d use. But, I knew that if I mostly obscured that color, leaving only tiny bits of it showing, it would add a nice sparkle to the resulting print.

Since dyes are transparent, I gave a lot of thought to how the underlying color would work with the new one. I thought a dull red (the complement of green) would give a dark, neutral result. And, as you can see, that’s exactly what I got.

My stencil was larger than the little piece I was printing, so some of the design got printed onto the plastic. No worries. I just laid some white fabric down onto it, and lifted a print. And then I added a couple more.

Next, I used that dirty stencil for what I call “dirty printing.” All you do is pull clear paste through the used stencil. It picks up the dye that was in the nooks and crannies, creating a more delicate version of the same lines. I layered them on top of each other, in various orientations. I love the look!

This is just one of the many techniques I learned in a five day class with Pat Pauly. She’s a wealth of knowledge!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. A broader term for this sort of treatment is “ghost print.” A ghost print is when you take a second print without adding any additional dye/paint/ink.