Saves

Just one more post about last week's workshop. Unlike most of the fiber arts classes I've taken, this one included several accomplished printmakers who'd never worked with fabric or fiber-reactive dyes before. Gerrie and I proved to be resources for those folks, and they in turn gave us a new perspective. I'm generalizing wildly here, but it seems to me that printmaking is about precision; the desired result is a discrete object, the print itself. Art quilters have a different attitude; they'll try anything that might result in an interesting surface. There is such a thing as art cloth, where the finished yardage stands on its own, compositionally. But we don't hesitate to cut into the middle of a fabric we've created to get just the right fragment for a work in progress. Unlike printmaking, painting or weaving, the whole-cloth design often doesn't matter.

I've developed a practice of bringing unsuccessful efforts from previous workshops, or boring fabrics from my stash, to class, just to see whether a new process, an additional layer or two, might redeem them in some way. This piece (below) started life as a portion of a bedsheet. I overdyed it with purple and screen-printed my own made-up mysterious runic symbol all over it. Ho hum. In last week's class I painted a shadow effect around portions of the markings, hoping to get a sense of depth. Mmmm, not so much. I used a dye that someone had labeled "purple," but that turned out to be blood-red. Quite the color combination there:


But as the dye dried, either the soda ash in the dye mixture or some interaction between the red and the earlier turquoise, or the even earlier purple, pushed out a fine white line between colors. The overlaid red on turquoise is kind of interesting, too. Tiny portions of this overall failed effort actually show promise. If and when I use this piece, I'll probably zoom in on those cool little bits and leave the rest of the fabric in tatters:


Another piece started life as solid yellow commercial yardage, which I wrapped and overdyed in an indigo workshop last year. Experimenting with dye painting, I did a few brushstroke squiggles, immediately realized my error, and attempted to wash them out. But because I'd used orange, of which the red component is a notorious dye bully, the squiggles remained. The piece, overall, reminded me of light filtering down through water. So, in last week's workshop, I screened on several fish. I remembered to account for the eyes, but the overall effect was a basic silhouette, too elementary-schoolish (no pun intended). So I stenciled a few markings onto each fish and discharged them with our bleaching agent of choice, thiourea dioxide, a.k.a thiox. As it happens, neither turquoise dye nor indigo bow down to the lightening powers of thiox, so the blue crept right back in when I washed the piece. What to do? Common household bleach to the rescue! It turns out that Soft Scrub (tm) or lotion-style Comet (tm) with bleach does the job. I used the same stuff later to print my leaf stencil (visible on the red and orange fabrics here) onto denim. It worked great, and it's the perfect consistency for screening right out of the bottle.


Shortly after I first started quilting, I acquired somewhere a length of men's shirt-like fabric, light gray with faint stripes and a tiny pink-and-magenta repeated motif. At some point I stamped it randomly with a magenta grid pattern. That did not alter its deeply uninteresting nature; if anything, I'd managed to transform it into something overtly ugly. Last week in class I did a series of swirly monoprints over it, in green, and, on top of that, printed my Japanese maple photo emulsion screen. Close-cropped, it's more interesting, at least, than it used to be. If it doesn't work as whole cloth, I can always cut into it when I need a gray-magenta-green sort of busy intertwined fabric with men's-tie motif markings. You never know.

Don't try this at home

One takeaway from the workshop way of life is the realization that there are some techniques and processes you just don't want to pursue on your own. That, in itself, is often worth the price of admission. You get to try something new without investing in equipment and supplies that you'll probably never use again. Last week's screen printing workshop produced two such "never again" conclusions.

One was devoré, the process that produces those beautiful cut-velvet scarves and other garments you see in stores. It involves applying a pattern using a toxic chemical solution that eats away the cellulose fiber (rayon or cotton, for instance) in your fabric, leaving the sheer silk backing. After the solution dries, you iron the treated portions til they turn the color of café-au-lait. At that point the nap starts falling off in those areas; rubbing gently usually gets rid of the rest of it.

All this time you're wearing a fume respirator -- not just one of those puny dust masks -- and rubber gloves. One runs the risk of starting with a too-hot iron and, peut-être, scorching portions of the backing fabric all the way to espresso. When rubbing off the nap, one might rub a hole in the delicate, now-compromised, silk. Ask me how I know this. Between the ambient toxicity and the fiddliness of the process, I strongly suspect that this might have been my sole attempt in life at doing devoré. Still, I'll mend the holes with silk thread and dye the piece, and perhaps produce a scarf that comes with modest bragging rights.

I hesitate to dismiss photo emulsion as cavalierly as I have devoré. It's an interesting process and fabulously versatile, but it requires a darkroom, a light box, and considerable deftness in applying the emulsion to the screen. You start by preparing a black line image -- an ink drawing, a stencil pattern, a photograph that you've tweaked in Photoshop to get rid of the gray scale values -- and copy it onto transparent acetate. In the darkroom, you coat a screen with a liquid light-sensitive photo emulsion and let it dry. Then you lay the acetate on a light table, position the treated screen on top of it, and expose the image for four or five minutes. Finally, you wash the screen quickly, under a strong spray of water, while the image gradually emerges on the emulsion. On the unexposed portions -- the parts that were black on your original image and on the acetate copy -- the emulsion washes away, leaving clear areas on the screen. From that point on, you work with it as with any other stencil; the clear portions allow the dye through, the coated portions block it. You can burn more than one image on a large screen and, when you print, mask off the ones you're not using. I used a public domain Japanese stencil design (thank you, Dover Books), and one of my own photos of a Japanese maple. Here's my first screen in its virgin condition:



And here are a couple of the prints I made with them. I'm pleased with the crispness of the black stencil on denim, and with the multicolor tree on a hand-dyed orange-y cotton:





Later I burned another stencil, a delicate bamboo pattern, on a smaller screen. It gave me eight or ten nice prints, and then started producing big blobs along one edge. I realized to my horror that the emulsion was peeling off. Apparently these things happen. It was nice while it lasted. I'll just think of it as a limited edition print run:

Five Days a Week

Last week I remembered what it felt like to commute to work. Gerrie and I took turns driving out to OCAC, four days in a row, for yet another art workshop. We left home at 8:30 and got home between 4:30 and 5:00. On day five we had to drive separately, but the routine was the same. Everything else in our lives -- cooking, email, catching up with family -- had to be accomplished between our arrival back home and bedtime. How do working people manage? For me the pressure was greater than it would otherwise have been, because Jer was in New Hampshire for his high school reunion. I even had to prepare meals for myself; the horror.

The bright side is that the hours between 9 and 4 felt more like play than work. For five days we explored screen printing -- apparently the preferred term now, since silkscreens are no longer made out of silk -- from simple stencils made from freezer paper or masking tape to tricky photo emulsions. Here's my wall o' stuff -- some of the better stuff, at least -- at the end of the workshop:


When you're immersed in art, you see everything through art goggles. Both this bubble pattern in a soaking bucket and the remains of my midmorning snack struck me as potential silkscreen designs:




Got dye? The studio refrigerator (below) is full of dye solution, print paste and assorted other chemicals. No food allowed, needless to say. The retro aqua interior adds to the skeery effect, casting a sickly aura on its contents:


I love the point in a dye workshop when your fabrics come out of the washer, colors fixed, and you hang them on a clothesline in the full light of day. It's sort of like a gallery show. Here's some finished work -- mine and others -- drying on the line:

Disneywoods and fabric remnants

My gift certificate was burning a hole in my pocket, so Monday morning Jer and I headed out to the Audubon Center on NW Cornell Road. We timed it so we could do our daily walk in the network of trails behind the sanctuary and then have lunch at the Skyline Restaurant, just a couple of miles down the road. Look at that man balancing a huge tree trunk on his head:

We walked the Jay Trail, a .9 mile sort-of-loop, and were amused and amazed by the bizarre tree specimens we encountered along the way. It was as if some Eftian theme park crew had installed weirdly shaped formations for our entertainment pleasure. I've posted a few examples on Flickr; they're at the top of my Photostream as of today, but they're all searchable via "Jay Trail" or "Forest Park" or "Audubon Center," in case you're reading this in, y'know, posterity or something.

Here's a merely arty shot. I've entitled it Lichen It a Lot:


The Jay Trail itself is beautiful, and connects with the Wildwood Trail, which leads deeper into Forest Park. Another whole region to explore someday.


We ended our walk at the Audubon store, where I redeemed my gift certificate on one of those freestanding metal posts with a graceful curve and a hook at the top, designed to hold a bird feeder. When we got home we found a place for it in the back yard. I'd been thinking about getting one for a while, so: perfect.

I was conflicted that morning about going on an expedition; I had so much fabric from the workshop to steam, wash, iron and photograph. But I got to all that later in the day. Here are a few (last, I promise) details that I thought were particularly cool. Can I start calling it "art cloth" yet?

This mysterioso red and black fabric turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought at first. It has very deep, almost photographic, shading and a lot of subtle movement when you look at it closely. This represents just a few square inches of a much larger piece:


The organza scarf to which I'd applied potato dextrin, then brushed with green Procion dye, is subtle, as pictured below. But as I was folding it to put away, I noticed that the combination of crackles and underlying indigo, when layered, was spectacular in spots. So this is just a placeholder to remind me to try to capture an image or two of the piece, folded over once or twice:


Years ago, in my old guild in California, I took a workshop with Velda Newman. She does some beautiful work, but it was one of those experiences from which you emerge thinking "Well, now I know I don't want to do that again," thus justifying the price of admission. We made giant fruit and vegetables out of quilters' cotton, which we painted and shaded realistically. The canteloupe with cheesecloth overlay, simulating the netting on the surface of the melon, still resides in my UnFinished Objects bin. My takeaway from that workshop, though, was permission to paint fabric with acrylics, or anything else for that matter. Here's a small wipecloth, about eight inches square, that I did toward the end of that class, just vertical brushstrokes in leftover colors. It was insipid, but I kept it because I keep everything. It's been in my stash for almost four years. Last week I did the potato dextrin resist number on it, then overdyed it with a dark olive-y green. My husband thinks it's a finished piece in itself, which is one reason why I love him:


Finally, here's the piece de resistance of serendipity. This is a detail of a rectangular piece about 15 x 18" that I first tried brush painting, in orange. My attempt to channel my inner Japanese calligrapher proved unsuccessful, so I did a Jackson Pollock number all over it in black. (The whole cloth is here, top center.) But when I applied that first downward brushstroke on the right, the folds of the dropcloth underneath produced these perfect bamboo-like markings. Spooky, huh?

Eat, Play, Shop

My friend Anita, art quilter extraordinaire and mother of the delightful and talented Zoe, was in town for a short visit, and yesterday was gurlz day out. Our ultimate destination was the Cracked Pots garden art show at Edgefield. We stopped for lunch en route at Om Seafood on SE Powell at 70-somethingth. I bought crab at the market several months ago, but hadn't yet gotten to the adjacent Chinese restaurant. Anita and I both ordered rock cod; the fish was impeccably fresh, our dishes were tasty, attractive, and well-prepared, and the service was friendly and flawless.

Everything sold at the Cracked Pots show -- bird houses, bird baths and feeders, benches, tables and trellises, whimsical sculptures and what-have-you -- is made from recycled materials. The opposite of flawless, in a way. One artist, for instance, transformed hundreds of pieces of flatware into a single giant fork. Another built a charming tractor out of rusty god-knows-what. (That's Anita in the green top, standing to the left.) Someone else turned old kitchen drawers on edge and called them shelves. I loved it. Edgefield itself is a recycled property, the former county poor farm, repurposed by the McMenamin brothers and folded into their funky yet picturesque hotel/restaurant/pub empire.

I lusted in my heart for several items, including a 12-foot-tall fire-breathing dragon with a price tag of $8,000-ish that surely would have been the talk of Rural Street. But heron sculptures have been calling out to me consistently since we moved to town, so I could easily justify my purchase of a two-dimensional Great Blue. S/he seems perfectly at home by the marshy-looking clump of grass just in front of our porch.

On the way back from Edgefield, we made two more shopping stops. Anita wanted to go to Fabric Depot, where I have no trouble killing time. She found yardage and incidentals she needed for Zoe's wedding, while I picked up a few random items, including Shiva paintsticks, a book on using same, and a new, ergonomically-friendly pair of scissors. I resisted buying a set of plastic, pre-formed, textured sheets (op-art, triangles, ethnic motifs, etc.) specifically designed for stamping and rubbing. I'd rather hunt for random objects, though the animal skin set was actually pretty cool. I did love the bolt of day-glo orange fabric on the display marked "camouflage." In what universe?

Finally, we detoured into Portland Nursery on SE Stark. It was another Anita-driven stop, but it gave me an excuse to cruise the shade house in search of the elusive toad lily, which Grace had recommended for the spot in the backyard from which she'd rescued and transplanted three or four struggling roses. I managed to wrest two variegated tricyrtis from Cornell Farm several weeks ago (long story), but they weren't in bloom, and here were several in full, glorious flower. I bought just one, a different variety from those you can kinda see in the background here, and will plant her, I hope, tomorrow.

So, a very satisfying afternoon. Several relaxed hours with a friend, sunny but not hot weather, a good meal and new restaurant discovery all in one, plus modest indulgence in my favorite kinds of shopping: fabric/sewing notions and plants/garden stuff. The only thing missing was a side trip to Powell's, but that would have been too much of a good thing.

Thickened Discharge

I can imagine the Google hits I'm going to get on this one. But this is not about sinus (or worse) infections. If you're surfing for symptoms, try WebMD. And good luck.

"Thickened discharge" is another method that fiber artists have developed to manipulate and alter fabric. "Discharge" is the opposite of dyeing; you're removing color rather than adding it. Simply put, discharge is selective bleaching.

I've played a bit with plain ol' chlorine bleach and gotten some interesting results, but in Jeannette Meyer's workshop at OCAC last weekend, we used thiox (smellier but less toxic), mixed with sodium alginate to add body. Hence thickened discharge. Here's a shot of me, masked but healthy, courtesy of Gerrie's blog.

Dealing with a gel or paste, as opposed to a liquid, gives you more control over the discharge medium and the end results. That's the theory, anyway. Instead of just dipping or spraying the fabric, you can paint, draw, stamp, or silkscreen, using all sorts of creative tools -- leaves, potato mashers, construction fencing, plastic crates and supermarket trays, circuit boards, bubble wrap, newspaper, foam rubber, masking tape, combs, brushes, meat tenderizers, syringes, squeeze bottles, fingers. Now, when I open a kitchen drawer, I think "hmmm, interesting..."

Here's some of my output on my design wall. China Rose wasn't particularly impressed with the art show in her napping territory, but I was happy with the results of my first attempts at silk screening. The purply vertical piece on the far left was done with masking tape, and the branching design on the three different fabrics toward the middle was stencil-cut out of freezer paper.

In preparation for the workshop, I'd overdyed some printed commercial fabrics, including some real uglies, that have been in my stash forever. Discharging definitely redeemed some of them. The others are still ugly, but in a much more interesting way.

Sunday afternoon, when the workshop ended, Jer got a ride over to OCAC from Gerrie's husband Steve. After a stop across the road at Cornell Farm to buy toad lilies for the backyard (they proved scarce and elusive, but after a protracted hunt I managed to bag two), we headed way up Skyline for a Slow Food potluck. The hosts have a couple of acres with a beautiful garden as well as dogs, chickens, and half a dozen llamas. The llamas are crazy about broccoli leaves; I almost lost a finger. Also, we were told, they show their affection by blowing in your face. Here's Jerry getting intimate with a llama. He'll try anything once.

Oh yes, my hair is shorter. I'll bury down here a full facial self-portrait, which I took by pointing the camera toward myself (duh) while aiming the viewfinder via its reflection in the mirror. I don't recommend this technique, flattering results-wise.

Dyeing the way you live

I spent most of the weekend at the Oregon College of Arts & Crafts, immersed up to my elbows in Judilee Fitzhugh's workshop on one-pot natural dyeing. "One-pot" means that the entire process -- cooking up the dyestuff (usually plant material), mordanting, and dyeing -- happens in the same pot. It's easier and less messy, in some ways, than Procion (tm) dyeing, and generally less toxic, though it takes more prep and the results are less predictable. The leaves, stems and flowers of the same plant might all yield different colors; time of year and water source figure in as well.

A mordant, for those of you who haven't been hanging out around the dyepots, is a substance that helps bind the dye to the fabric (though not all dyestuffs require the extra help). Simply using an aluminum, copper or iron pot will often provide enough mordant to do the job. We used powdered alum, as well as a copper vat and a nicely-rusting iron pot. Different mordants skew the results toward darker or brighter shades; iron, for instance, "saddens" or grays the color. (This process goes back to medieval times, and some of the terminology, wonderfully, does, too.)

An amazing array of vegetable matter will yield worthwhile dyes. Queen Anne's lace, dahlias, daffodils, rhododendrons, manzanita and madrone are all good dyestuffs. There are dozens of books on the subject; I picked up a lot of information (some of it contradictory) browsing through Judilee's collection. You can dye with turmeric, saffron or annatto -- which has been moldering in my spice collection for years -- rhubarb leaves, which are poisonous when ingested, red cabbage, spinach or chard, and of course coffee grounds or old, cold tea. Hey, throw it in your dye vat before you put it in your compost bin!

For the workshop, though, we used three colorific crowd-pleasers that come pulverized and pre-packaged: osage orange, logwood and brazilwood. They tend toward yellow, purple and red, respectively. We also stewed up some walnut hulls (brown) and a mess' o' Japanese knotweed (red-brown). I even brought in some of those hateful spiky seedballs from my sweetgum trees, hoping to find some redeeming value in them. Nah.

Judilee mixed up some freeze-dried indigo, by popular request, just to have on hand. The proximity of a vat of indigo, ready to go, is very alluring, and I ended up with more blue fabric than I'd intended. We also used the indigo to overdye some of our yellows to a lovely green. Ironically, despite the grass-stained clothing of our childhood, not many dye plants yield a good clear green.

There were only three of us in the workshop, me and two women named Amy, which made it easy for Judilee; she already knew me, so everyone else had to be Amy. A class this small gave us all room to experiment, ask questions and compare results, and made it so much less of a hassle to find space to work and to hang dripping pieces of fabric. And it was quiet. It felt luxurious. On Friday in particular, when it rained hard all day, it was lovely to stand over a steaming dye vat, thinking that I had nothing to do at that particular moment other than what I was already doing.

Anyway, we dyed a variety of silks, from organza to dupioni (yum), plus some wool that I'd bought at Mill Ends and shared around (that's the wool hanging to dry in my laundry room at home). I dyed the rest of the cream-colored, rose-patterned damask tablecloth that I used last year in my Mom Quilt. One of the Amys brought in hemp, which took the dye well, too. By the end of the class, each of us had an enviable stash of fabrics in a range of gorgeous, lush colors, as well as some yarn and thread that we'd wound and dipped, plus a few skeins that Judilee had prepared for us.

Weeks ago, when I registered for the workshop, I couldn't see myself stewing up vatfuls of miscellaneous stalks and stems on my own stovetop, but I figured that this would be a good opportunity to find out what natural dyes were all about. The workshop not only met my expectations, it fired my imagination. I am my mother's Saran-Wrap-washing daughter, after all, and the idea of using stuff that's free for the picking, pruning or scavenging is very appealing. Plus there's the hippie granola Berkeley/Portland sustainability thing -- reduce, re-use, recycle -- which has been part of my psyche, if not always my practice, ever since I can remember. So I came home yesterday and ordered two natural dyeing books. Now I'm eyeing my rhododendrons.