Becka’s Project Journal

I took a class on Tuesday night about using transfer or disperse dyes.  These are the kinds of dyes used on polyester, which is not a very dyeable fiber.  The process we used for these was to paint with them on paper.  At the strength we used them they were almost like painting with watercolors.  You could do all kinds of drips and play with salt and spray bottles to make textures in the wet paint.  I mostly used a really grungy beat up paintbrush because I wanted a lot of brush strokes and stray smears for texture.

The colors when you paint with them are very dull and in most cases nothing at all like the finished piece once it is printed.  The yellow is a deep mustard color as paint, but bright bright sunflower yellow when printed.  It is very much a leap of faith to know that what you are painting and what you will get are not going to be the same colors.  I didn’t want saturated primaries, so I dulled my colors down by adding a few drops of the complementary color to the mix – my red got some green in it etc and I mixed a custom palette before I started painting.

You paint enough paper to cover your piece of fabric.  I made 3 large sheets and a bunch of smaller ones.  Wait for everything to dry.  Then you sandwich your fabric against the painted side of the paper and put the whole thing in to a heat press.  My friend Karen has a press that is 15 inches across, so we could do 15 inch sections at a time.  16 seconds at 400 degrees and the colors transfer from paper to fabric.  It is the combination of the high temperature and the pressure of the press that makes the dyes vaporize and then re-combine with the polyester fibers.  Magic.

This is about 3 layers of printing and I printed the back as well.  The fabric is a drapy peachskin polyester.  Karen taught me how to do a hand-rolled hem, too, so I am hemming this one to wear it as a scarf.

Andy was being super-sneaky and grabbed this shot of me working on the “5 Rules of Sewing” banner.  Do you know the 5 rules?  We write these on the white board in our sewing classroom every year when summer camp starts.

1. Put the foot down.
2. Two eyes and two hands on the machine.
3. Three back stitches at the beginning and end.
4. Hold your ends.
5. If it makes a funny noise, STOP.

I used a bunch of kid-dyed fabric to make a portable version of the rules so we can take it on the road.  We are working on the “5 rules of Ironing” for next year.

These turned out so gorgeous I had to share!  My friend Karen and I just finished up a school residency with 2 kindergarten classes; I designed the class, she taught it.  The teachers wanted to do a Native American project so I suggested making these little star quilts and reading the book “Shota and the Star Quilt”.  The diamonds are cut and stiffened fabric that the kids glue-sticked to a card stock backing.  Each kid made a little quilt and then they made a bigger one all together and had a “quilting bee”.

Had a ball teaching my beadwork class today.  We had fun stitching.  I had men in my class (this always tickles me to pieces.  I love a guy who sews or knits!)  We chatted, we brainstormed and best of all, I think everyone “got it”.  Some of them didn’t love it as much as I do, but they figured it out.

I have lots of samples stitched by other people, but I didn’t really have anything I had stitched in the technique I was teaching, so I made my “Duet” bracelet.  That is a single row of lane stitch with a picot beaded edge (the two skills I taught in class).   Size 11/0 beads, stitched on wool felt with 8/2 perle cotton.  (Click the picture to see the whole thing)

Green for St Patty’s Day!

More rows finished on my shawl.

I am also making class samples for a workshop I am teaching on Saturday about Native American beadwork.  It’s a teacher training session and I am showing the “lane stitch”.  The blue lines on this sample are the lanes.  You stitch rows of beads in lines like this to fill large areas.  The colors in this sample are not the greatest, but this was what I had for beads the right size.  I am teaching using size 6/0 beads (big ones) rather than 12/0 that you think of as “seed beads”.  Easier to see what you are doing in a larger size and I can use embroidery needles and heavy thread.  I have several techniques all thought up for adapting to different ages too so I will be stitching more samples up tomorrow so I can pass those around.  (You can find me on Saturday 1:00 – 3:00 at the Arts for All Conference for St Paul Public Schools.)

I had the enormous pleasure of attending a networking meeting with the regional arts council that was also a hands-on art activity, namely weaving on a floor loom.  First a huge thanks to MRAC and the Weavers Guild of MN for putting it together and sponsoring it.  You guys rock!

Our workshop was based on the Weavers Guild’s “Try It” classes.  You show up, a very kind volunteer has “dressed the loom” (aka warped it) for you and you get to just sit down and weave.  What a deal.  These were warped with Harrisville Shetland wool.  There is a whole wall of it in the Guild in gorgeous colors.  We had a few minutes of instruction, a demo and then chose a loom. Mine was set up with stripes of blue-violet, raspberry pink and two shades of green.  The weft yarn was a heathery purple.

The warp threads were set up at 10 per inch and our goal was to weave 10 weft threads per inch, to make a balanced weave.  That meant that your woven piece should look like a windowscreen.

Believe it or not, that was actually easier than it looks.  So we wove and wove.  I think I worked on my scarf for about 3 hours.  I chatted a lot while I was doing it.  When I took it off the loom it felt like burlap.  Yeah, I know.  Yuck.  But never fear, I saw finished samples and they were totally amazing.  Why the burlap feel?  The yarn is full of lanolin and it makes it feel kind of yucky and scratchy.  I suspect it makes it easier to weave with because there’s not a lot of fuzz to get caught on the other threads as you go.  So then I took my scarf home and gave it a bath.

Warm soapy water.  Squishing and scrunching.  Within half a minute the yarn is already softer.  The goal now is to “full” it.  Letting the fibers shrink a little and fluff up to fill in those holes you left when you wove it.  Why make holes and then fill them up?  Why not just weave it tightly?  The answer is drape.  If you pack it tightly together, your scarf is like a board when you get done.  The looser weave lets it be soft and drapey.  Mine started out about 8 inches by 75 inches.  It’s now 6 1/2 by about 66 inches.

Out of the bath, roll it in a towel and squeeze out the extra water.  Then I spread it out on the guest room bed and brushed it.  I used a nylon nail brush.  Brushing the surface fluffs the fibers up even more.

The bottom part of this has been brushed, the folded over part not yet.  See the ugly orange yarn?  That’s the fringe.  We wove about a dozen rows of that from an acrylic yarn that doesn’t shrink.  After brushing everything, then we unravel those fringe ends.

The last few rows of the wool yarn (before the ugly orange stuff) is a little extra tight, to make a stable edge before the fringe.

Finally, I stretch it all out to dry.

There it is!  My felted garden with its ribbons.  Pratt School is about 1/2 a block from the Textile Center, so every class walked over to do their part of the garden with me and Lynn, another Textile Center teacher.    All the pieces in the garden are wet felted and then my fantastic intern Lauren and I stitched them on to the background piece.  It was hung in a sort of odd spot at the fair, but I hope lots of people got to see it in person.

Summer Camp started this week at work.  My favorite time of the year and the most crazy time of the year for me.  Today was 2 camps, I was in the building from 7:45 – 5:30.  Had to come home and change my clothes becasue of some sneaky red paint (hope it washes out!)  Today a sock narwhal was created.  A group of teens made thermofax silk screens of their own artwork and printed posters, t-shirts, notebooks and more and more.  Tomorrow is the final day of sock animals class plus “Creature Quilts”, which is patchwork quilts for your stuffed animals.  Must find time over the weekend to get more wool for the “Trek through India” class next week.  Felted vessels are Monday’s project.

This weekend I spend an afternoon at the Shepherd’s Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo MN. It’s a haven for fiber geeks. Several buildings packed with yarn, fleece, spinning wheels, spinners, weavers, knitters and more. Then walk across the fairgrounds a little way and it is barns full of sheep, goats, llamas and more. I taught two mini versions of my “technology for artists” classes in a 4H barn with no internet connection, but despite that, I think they went really well! (Hello class!) I didn’t take a camera with me, so no photos of the sheep!

We also had a couple of cute visitors over the weekend. My nephew, who just turned 6 months old, and his mommy came up for his first trip to the big city. We went to a couple of greenhouses and hung around the house with Lucy. Evidently, when you are 6 months old, Lucy is the funniest thing ever. Every time she would look his way, he would burst out giggling.

This week should be a little quieter. I finished my Pioneer sweater and it is drying from blocking right now. Pictures soon. It turned out great, although I did a couple of modifications.

It’s also time for another book report! Recently finished:

Dissolution, Dark Fire and Sovereign by C.J. Sansom.
Mysteries set in the time of King Henry VIII, just after he had beheaded Anne Boleyn. Having watched The Tudors recently, I was instantly familiar with all kinds of characters from these books. Matthew Shardlake, the main character, is a lawyer who gets noticed by “those with power” far too often for his piece of mind. Great mysteries with lots of interesting incidental characters. The King and the Court are really minor characters, which I like. Often these kinds of mysteries have a talented commoner interacting with the King or Queen and this was a nice change. Matthew deals with underlings who are grasping to stay powerful and often they do not care how that might cause problems for those they order around. I look forward to reading more.

Firebird by Mercedes Lackey. A retelling of a classic fairy tale, another favorite genre. This one was a very easy read. Our main character, Ilya, is clever, the ending has a nice twist, the story had a very classic feel. I am not familiar with the Firebird story, but it had that traditional kind of feeling. I usually like Mercedes Lackey’s writing and this was no exception.

Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn. I loved the first two. The third was equally compelling. I read it nearly in one sitting. Lady Julia epitomizes “curiosity killed the cat” as she herself acknowledges in this book. I would call these a romantic mystery. Once again, great twists to the plot, witty writing that make me laugh out loud. The covers to these books in paperback are ridiculous -don’t let that turn you off. They are smarter than they look.

The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey. Part of her “Tales of the 500 Kingdoms series”, which is truly delightful. The series follows fairy godmothers and the kingdoms they oversee. Not true fairies, but clever magically talented girls who find themselves doing an unusual job. The “Tradition” is a magical force that tries to recognize bits of traditional fairy tales happening to regular people and then it jumps in and tries to force their story fit the fairy tale. A girl with a grumpy stepmother can find herself reliving the Cinderella story. Light, funny and packed with snippets and characters of fairy tales, which makes it fun.

Friday, I spent the day learning to marble on fabric and paper. A very thin layer of acrylic paint is floated on top of a layer of carageenan. You drop the paint with an eye dropper and then pull long combs through it to create the patterns. I had a great time in class – it was so much fun to just be a student for a change.

These are scans of fabric pieces that I did. The fabric is alot easier than the paper and I got better results, but the alum (mordant) in the fabric contaminates your carageenan tank and the way to get it back in balance is to do a couple of pieces of paper in between your fabric pieces. I mostly cut up my paper pieces in to small bits to use as thank you cards.