Oops! Dyeing Duds

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