A basket of plant dyes on top of seta painted silk. In the basket: dandelion, daffodil, bracken, false indigo, tulip, forget me not, and day lily dyed velvet.
I've been making myself paint on Mondays, more as a way to open myself up than to achieve perfection. Last week, I painted on china silk with transparent seta colour. I would have used blue, but I am out of blue. Using up art supplies is another thing I'm doing on Mondays.
Wet fabric was spread across a table and the diluted seta colour was loosely applied. More important was how the materials dried. One piece was folded and wrapped in plastic to blend the colours, then taken out and sprinkled with salt before leaving in 'lumps' for 48 hours.
The other was gathered up into loose pleats while wet and left to dry in that position. The colour wicked and arranged itself into waves.
I heat set with an iron and also in a hot dryer for one hour. Then washed with mild detergent and dried in the dryer again.
Now what?
A basket of plant dyes on top of seta painted silk. In the basket: dandelion, daffodil, bracken, false indigo, tulip, forget me not, and day lily dyed velvet. 
I've been making myself paint on Mondays, more as a way to open myself up than to achieve perfection. Last week, I painted on china silk with transparent seta colour. I would have used blue, but I am out of blue. Using up art supplies is another thing I'm doing on Mondays. 
Wet fabric was spread across a table and the diluted seta colour was loosely applied. More important was how the materials dried. One piece was folded and wrapped in plastic to blend the colours, then taken out and sprinkled with salt before leaving in 'lumps' for 48 hours. 
The other was gathered up into loose pleats while wet and left to dry in that position. The colour wicked and arranged itself into waves. 
I heat set with an iron and also in a hot dryer for one hour. Then washed with mild detergent and dried in the dryer again. 
Now what?
9 comments:
wow judy , this is so beautiful. is seta colour paint or dye?
Seta colour is fabric paint, but it leaves the hand of the fabric as soft as dyeing it would.
The fabrics look really beautiful all together.
xo,
J
these are just yummy enough to eat!!
Those colours are delicious. I have to dye some more velvet soon but I hate the process..the rinsing is the worst bit. But the results are amazing.
i am in love with the strata in that basket---layers of yum candy gorgeousness natural striated yumsh
Lovely results! It's so exciting dyeing as you never quite know how it's going to turn out.
I just love all of your dyeing experiments Judy...you inspire me! Thanks so much for sharing some of the process with us too. I have always wondered what mordants your used (in fact I wondered what mordants were!). I will look out for some alum and cream of tartar now. Thus far I have only used my aluminium pans as a mordant.
I love these beautiful pastel hues you have created. such exciting posts...thank you.
Jacky xox
i really do think there is room for all the colorants and dyes. (except for the poisonous ones, these we wave good bye to). i began using natural dyes because i got sick and tired of chemical ones, and over the years i move back and forth. what particularly moves me is color. period. and when i really want a lot of color, i move to paint.
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