Ideas, Tips, For Sale

Coleen's Tapestry Loom

Coleen weaves on a vertical loom, the tension is maintained by weights tied to the warp ends.  It is placed on an angle, which makes it possible to use thread and a stick to make harnesses to create different sheds.  So far I have only used tabby weave.

The tapestry began just with playing at making a bird, and then thinking about where that bird would perch.  Channeling the Hard Day’s Night Beatles album cover, I think.  My partner, David, had a life sized photo copy of his face used for a sculpture project which I worked from. (11-2024)

MLH ICE DYED SWATCH INSTRUCTIONS   Priscilla Lynch

This shows the rack over the dishpan

A finished piece

 

IN YOUR KIT:  ½ yd pre-soda soaked fabric*, small bag with a rounded ½ tsp of Procion Mx dye powder “Raven”, mask, gloves, plastic spoon

YOU WILL NEED:  Use only items that are not used for food; laundry or dedicated dye items are OK

     A dish pan, disposable roasting pan,  kitty litter tray or anything with 2” sides that will catch melting ice; a rack or  crumpled aluminum foil or anything that will hold the fabric and ice above the melted ice, ICE -  I like to buy a bag because the ice comes in smaller pieces – and I don’t run out of ice from the ice maker!

 

PROCEDURE

1.        Place your rack over the dish pan or elevate it within the pan.

2.       Wearing gloves, dampen your fabric and scrunch it up on the rack. Try to get lots of small hills and valleys which will yield more interesting cloth.

3.       Cover your fabric completely with ice. If the ice is falling off your fabric you can make a collar of aluminum foil to hold it in place.

4.       Wearing a mask and gloves, sprinkle the enclosed dye powder over the ice lightly with the spoon.   Your amount of dye powder has been limited because a little goes a long way and the beauty of ice dyeing is the variety of shades of color that you get. Too much dye and you would have a solidly colored fabric.

5.       Cover the set up loosely with plastic and let sit for 24 hours. It needs to sit this long because this is when the dye powder reacts with the soda ash to produce a permanent bond with the fabric. In dye lingo this is called “batching”.

6.       Now for the fun part!  Wearing gloves, rinse the fabric in cold running water until the water runs clear. Then wash in hot soapy (Synthrapol or a neutral dishwashing soap without additives) water, rinse and dry.

 

See Dharma Trading Co for more detailed instructions and pictures.

Ice Dyeing at Dharma Trading

 

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·         To prepare soda soaked fabric for future ice dyeing:

·         Buy PFD ( prepared for dyeing) fabric if you can – cotton, linen or rayon

·         Scour the fabric – including PFD fabric. This removes any substances on the fabric which will interfere with the dyeing

·         To scour: wash the fabric in hot water with 1 tsp soda ash (can be purchased through Dharma or   you can use  pH Plus sold wherever pool or spa chemicals are sold. Soda ash is sodium carbonate) and 1 tsp Synthrapol or detergent.

·         To prepare the soda ash soak solution dissolve 2 cups of soda ash in 1 gallon of warm water. This is a more concentrated solution than is usually used for prepping fabric because the ice will dilute the soda ash which is needed to fix the dye to the fabric. Save to be reused.

·         Soak the fabric for at least 15 minutes, wring out the extra soak and hang to dry. Don’t put in the dryer or iron because it will scorch the fabric. You might want to wear gloves while handling the wet fabric because the soda ash can be hard on your hands. I usually dry my fabric on a rack in a shower which makes it easy to clean up the drips.

·         When your fabric is dry, fold it and place it in a plastic bag until you are ready to use it. It will last for a long time.

 

Jennifer's hints on taking photos.

- I never use a flash

- I always put the pieces on a white foam core backing to hang

- I always do it in natural light from my west slider window/door--- preferably afternoon when the sun is almost around to that side.  (I've tried it in the morning and the background white is too blue and it distorts the colors.)

- Sometimes I put the foam core piece on the carpet/floor in front of the slider and place the piece, especially if it's small or a garment or sample, and take the photo from above.

- I use my editing feature in my iPhoto library for every photo and crop it as well as increase the exposure and brilliance and sharpness.  On mine, there's also a Shadows feature where you can get rid of those.  Also erasing the "horizon" line at the bottom so the freestanding pieces seem to be floating.

- And I try to always label/title each image.  I have a naming convention so I can find all those thousands of pictures I have!

- Also I rarely use my phone to take pix (only when I'm out).  I use my regular camera and upload all of the images to my laptop.  I guess that's why I don't use Instagram...