Adventure Quilter

Now THIS is fun! Scoop up some thickened dye with a stiff squeegee (think large credit card,) and smear it onto some fabric. It spreads into glorious color and makes a very satisfying swishing noise at the same time.

I started with yellow and then added yellow-orange,(which looks dark orange when it’s this thick.)

But, it DID look mighty orange.  Next, I added orange. Hmm, there was no color change. Then, I realized that my yellow-orange had been contaminated with deep orange.  Oops.  This is going to be very orange!

Finally, I added red and got this, (still wet.)

When dry it looked like this, which was more orange than I really wanted. (No surprise.)

No worries. I over dyed it and got some very useful fabric. (I took a photo, but it doesn’t really show the difference.  You’ll have to trust me on this one.)

So, my overly orange fabric isn’t a very good example of this great technique.  Here’s another one I did the same way.  Can you see how I just swept the color on?  And that became the “pattern” for the piece.

See the finished fabric – one of my favorites.

If you’re a dyer you’ll definitely want to try this technique when creating a background.

Ellen Lindner

You can’t get it right all the time.  And knowing that relieves a certain amount of any perfectionist tendencies.  I fully embrace the unexpected “mistakes.”  Like this one. This was created with a special type of interfacing stencil.  It’s shown wet here, which means it’s darker than it will be after washing.

BUT.  If you have forgotten to soak your fabric in soda ash before adding the stenciled dye nearly ALL of the color will wash out.  Like this. Oh well.  It will be a nice background for something else.

And then there’s this piece, which looks WAY better in this photo than it does in real life.  It’s a jumble of dull and dark greens.  But, that’s not the ugliest part. That part is played by the black triangles I drew on with a syringe.  Oh my! My technique was off and I got horrible blobs and runs everywhere. So, I immediately washed the whole thing, hoping the black wouldn’t have time to cure/set.  No such luck, so the dry version is almost as ugly – now with gray drawn triangles. But, oh well.  I needed another clean up rag, right?

Check out my other posts for some decent results.

Ellen Lindner

After over dyeing fabrics from previous sessions, my ordered fabric arrived and I jumped at the opportunity to make some “new fabric.”  That is, starting with plain white fabric. I had plans and was excited to implement them!

This one was meant to go with a favorite fabric.  Therefore, I repeated the pattern and some of the colors.

It’s VERY easy to get carried away when painting with a syringe, shown below.  It’s just so much fun! The paint just glides on and you get to scribble.  I think the hard part is not going overboard with this sort of thing. (Note the grid and colors which will match the fabric above.)

These two were made with a glue resist drawn directly on the fabric.  Once it was dry, I squeegeed on thickened dye in my usual fashion.  The glue washed out with the usual washing.  I really like the results!

How cool are these little lines?

Of course, most fabrics need more than one layer of color, so some over dyeing is also called for. This nearly solid fuchsia isn’t QUITE as bright as it looks in this photo, but it’s pretty close.  It definitely needed some over painting of some sort, in a darker color.

And here it is, (bottom) with a dark blue grid added.  (This color is much more accurate.) The darker color definitely toned it down a bit, and added some much needed interest.

In the top fabric shown above, I used patterns predominant in my last 2 dye sessions: a grid and a petal.  That way I’ll have versatility with the fabric and can use it with either combo.

Having fun!!!
Ellen Lindner

I’ve had some good results with my fabric dyeing.  I was going to show you the “regular” stuff and save my favorites for last.  But who has such restraint? So here they are: my favorite fabrics from my recent bout of dyeing.

For the large piece on the left below, my goal was to use multiple colors but with some repetition of pattern. I was thinking that different sections could be used together. The two pieces on the right were specifically dyed to go with the first one.  I’m liking the combo A LOT.

The color palette was inspired by this clean up rag. I wanted to play up the yellow-orange, (rather than my typical red-orange.)

Then there’s this fabric.  Again, I wanted multiple colors and had great fun just sweeping them on with a stiff squeegee (like a large credit card.)This is what it looked like wet.

Of course, the colors always look darker when it’s wet.  Here’s what it looked like dry, with some black marks added.

I love it!  The colors came out exactly as I expected and wanted. Don’t you love the black marks?  Can you see how the sweeping ones mirror the motion of my arm as I applied the background color?

The long sweeping lines were made with a credit card.  And an open grid served as a stamp.  I applied it with pressure from my hand and soon found that I had a grid imprint on my glove.  Well, I couldn’t waste that, so it went onto the fabric, too. Can you find it?  (I did about 3 hand prints.)

I can’t wait to use these awesome fabrics!

Ellen Lindner