Dying specialty fabrics is a lot of fun. Having said that, I don’t think I’m that good at it. And I DEFINITELY am challenged when it comes to using them.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
During my recent dye session I tried to create some specialty fabrics that could either be used together or that could be used as “anchor” fabrics for a quilt.
Like these two.
I was hoping to use them together. These are each 45″ high, so you can see that the scale is pretty large. I was excited about trying them.
I thought this one could be a good anchor fabric. The motifs are smaller, so it will work more like yardage – but not entirely.
I sorta love this blue/green one, below, on the left. It has the feel of yardage, but the large scale “spades” make it less so.
The one on the right looked better when it was wet. The yellow/gold background was much darker and richer. Maybe it will need some over dying down the road.
This fabric was made with something new to me: a mask. A mask is similar to a stencil, but the pattern doesn’t extend all the way to what would be the corners of a printing screen. Which means I didn’t want to screen print with it, because I’d get bit rectangles of color, with the delicate design masked out. Instead, I applied the dye loosely with the sponge. This allowed me to merge one color into another.
As you can see, I wasn’t careful about preserving the masked designs. Instead, I sponged over some of them with a later color. This gave interesting results. See what I mean in the detail shot below.
I was delighted with the results and will definitely play around with masks some more.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. Do you have tips on working with masks? I’d love to hear them.
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