Fabric Dyeing Experiment



Sunday afternoon I decided to try dyeing a piece of white cotton to another option for the lilly quilt. I use Procion MX dyes and sometimes Rit dyes for fabric, but I didn't have orange or red & yellow to make orange of either of these dyes. My solution was to use my Setacolor fabric paints.

I mixed up the red and yellow to make a medium orange, then thinned it with water and painted it onto the wet fabric with a 2" sponge brush. My piece of fabric is 36" x 60" and I had to really spread that paint out to cover the entire piece. The color was too light so I mixed up more paint in a larger quantity and added more red, then painted it on over top the lighter orange. Yes, I now need to purchase more red and yellow paint!

Since I wanted a textured look, I bunched up the fabric and let it dry on my work surface which is a piece of cardboard covered with heavy plastic. The next morning the fabric was mostly dry so I took the entire piece of cardboard outside and let the wind finish drying the fabric. Since it was cloudy I wasn't concerned about a sunpainted affect which was good since it was also windy and I had to weigh down the fabric and cardboard with rocks. After the fabric dried, I ironed it to heat set it and now it's ready to use!


Here's a close-up of the texture. The photo is a light lighter than the fabric truely is. I love the look of this and think I'll save the fabric for the final quilt instead of using it on the trial run.


An even closer look. I doubt I'll ever be able to dupicate this look again. That's the beauty of hand-dyed fabrics - or in this case, hand-painted fabrics.

Comments

Natalie Carlton said…
Did you wash your fabric with synthropol or retain? I dont know if i'm spelling them correct. But you should it help keep the loose dye from bleeding. I'm in love with dying fabric ... at the moment anyway...

Happily Quilting Natalie
November 12, 2009 at 7:37 AM
Susan Loftin said…
Natalie - I haven't washed this piece of fabric since painting it. I ironed it to heat-set the paints as Setacolor recommends. When I do wash my painted fabrics though, I use Synthropol and hand wash them in my sink. The last pieces of Setacolor hand painted fabrics I washed didn't bleed at all. Hopefully this piece will won't either.
November 12, 2009 at 8:04 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Log Cabin

Image
I don't know the title of this quilt, but it is a Log Cabin Variation that I just completed for a customer. I love the soft blues and browns in this quilt.  It just begged for feathers. See what I mean? I did add a few leaves in the small border, though.
Read more

Zipper Leader Tutorial - Part 1

Image
I removed my old zippers yesterday and completed attaching my new zippers. Along the way I made 2 additional sets of zipper leaders so I have the ability to have 3 quilts ready to zip on if I need to. As promised, I took photos of the steps and will post them in stages. These directions are my own and you may be able to find other instructions out the internet. This is something I came up with on trial and error. The first set of zipper leaders I made were with garment zipper that you buy by the yard at a fabric store. They didn't work out the way I wanted. They kept separating on their own. So now I have 8 yards of zipper to use in other projects. First off you'll need some materials and supplies. 1. Canvas Duck - I purchased 4 yards of 60" wide canvas so I wouldn't have to seam the leaders. This is enough to make 5 sets of 2 leaders. Buy the length to match the length of your zippers. 2. Separating Zippers in the size of your choice - I purchased 144" long zippe
Read more

First Things First

Image
Here is the first step in remodeling my quilting studio. We bought a folding table and a student chair on wheels so I now have a place for my sewing machine! I'm so excited. No more running up and down the stairs to sew, press, quilt, etc. Everything can now be done in the studio. My youngest can also play with her playdough on the table instead of on the cloth cover of my ironing board :o Of course I still don't have finished walls, but I can work in comfort all in one room until we get to that point. My DH and I priced drywall and other options for the walls this afternoon. Drywall is still our number 1 choice at this moment, but I wanted to see if we could find something that I could handle by myself and yet still be cost effective. Drywall sheets are too heavy for me to lift on my own and hang on the walls. Hubby's job is too hectic these days for him to take any time off to hang drywall and I'm getting anxious to complete the studio, so I thought we should try to f
Read more