Ice Dye Playday

Several of us got together for an ice dyeing play day at Amy's. The weather had been close to 100 all week, but it cooled down for us to a perfect 85. We mixed up two buckets of soda ash, so we could pre-soak our fabrics. Amy had the backyard set up with wire shelving for racks and we all brought different plastic baskets, wire baskets, colanders and stuff to place the fabric in and let the ice drip through. Cheryl brought a large plastic tub, and a refrigerator shelf which she placed on bricks to suspend in the tub. She dyed a several yard piece of fabric all at once.

We wore aprons, rubber gloves and tried to remember the masks when working with the dry dye powder. Several of the ladies had silk scarves to dye, t-shirts and cotton napkins also.

We covered the baskets with plastic to let the ice melt and the dye to batch set. We had a wonderful potluck lunch and just visited and talked about what we were doing. After some time passed, all the ice melted pretty quickly, we took the fabric out of the baskets and put each piece into a Ziplock bag to take home and let set overnight.

Clare seams to like purple. The large piece of fabric she pinched the center of each half and twisted it into opposite directions to create the spiral.

Lorraine twisted her fabric from the corner and used the indigo color Procion MX dye to get the shibori like result.

Sara's multi color silk scarf matches her tie dye t-shirt.

Cheryl's large piece of fabric was the one in the tub. The other fabric was a combo of electric blue and indigo. We had many of the individually named colors of dye powder, instead of working with the 3 primaries and mixing our own blends. We feel this gave us much better results, because we kept getting the same purples and greens every time.

This was made with Chinese red and burgundy, the other with dutch chocolate and terracotta. Other favorite colors were lime squeeze, and hot pink, we also tried better black and jet black, they combined great with the bronze. I can't tell which was more "Black" because we did not use a high enough concentration of dye and we were mixing it with other colors. Amy took her last few pieces of soda ashed fabric and hung it on the clothes line, she dripped liquid dyes on it, left over from our last dye workshop. The fabrics were left over night in the plastic bags, then rinsed until the water ran mostly clear, then washed with Synthrapol in the wash machine and dried and ironed. See the June meeting post to see the results.

Sweatshirt Play Day

Several Fyber Cafe members got together for a play day at Pat W.'s house, we brought potluck goodies and our sewing machines.

Sara had worn a sweatshirt that we wanted to try to make for ourselves. Basically, you apply patches to a ready made sweatshirt, after you have cut open the seams. We cut squares and rectangles, and laid them out on a sleeve first, stitching down the patches. Lorraine was using primary colors, to go with a fabric with quilt sayings on them.

Pat G. used a selection of "Stonehenge" fabric, she had sets of jelly rolls and precut squares, in all different color ways.

Peggy used country colors, as well as some fussy cut images, of apple, chickens etc...

Pat W. was using black and white prints, with a little bit of lime green for accent. Some of her prints were from New Zealand, and some had zebras and elephants on them.

Amy used a variety of purple patches on a lavender sweatshirt. She also used a variegated purple thread for her stitching. The interlocking grid was too much stitching, and it shrunk too much and did not have any stretch to it.

Amy got hers finished over the weekend, but it was a lot of work, next time bigger patches and less stitching. She cut up the middle, rounded the top edge, and used a bias binding around her edges to finish the sweatshirt. Sara's sample shirt had the patches and edges folded over a half inch and zigzag top stitched. After washing the raw edges will fray and fuzz up, for a raggedy look. That's why you don't want to do so much stitching. Now we have to wait for the next meeting to see how everyone else's shirts turned out.

Ice Dyeing at Maureen's

Maureen had an Ice Dyeing session at her house with Sylvia and it looks like Gracie in the background. Maureen has a wonderful studio, and they set up on lots of plastic with wire baskets. Gracie always likes to do clothes for school, check out the fun socks! I gotta try that.

Group & Recipe

The group picture taken at Meredith's Play Day by her son. Left to right, back row: Meredith, Jana, Vera, Peggy, middle: Nancy, Nancy, Amy, Pat, front: Barb The recipe for Meredith's yummy ham sandwiches. "Hula Buns" (renamed by Pat) Funeral Sandwiches(original name) 1 pkg King's Hawaiian Rolls, 1/2 to 1 Lb of good deli ham, Swiss cheese slices, 1/2cup butter, melted, 3Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 Tbsp mustard, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, dash of onion powder. 1. Cut the rolls in half and line the bottom of a baking pan with the bottom of the rolls. Layer the ham slices, then Swiss cheese, and place the top half of the rolls back on. 2. Mix together, butter, Worcestershire, mustard, brown sugar and onion powder. Pour the whole batch over the buns, drenching each one. Cover tightly and marinade from 4-24 hours. 3. Preheat the oven to 350' Bake for 15 minutes, uncovered, or until cheese is melted, and bun tops are a bit golden. Serve warm.

Meredith's Play Day, part II

We started out the morning with ice dyeing, while it was still cool outside. We went through 8-10 bags of ice, as we all fixed up baskets, and wire trays with fabric that had been soaked in soda ash. We mostly scrunched, or twisted, silk scarves, white fabric, yardage, and t-shirts. Piling the ice on top, we sprinkled on an assortment of powdered Procion MX dyes. 2 Blacks, bronze, and bright purple were favorites, but every color was used. We covered it all with black plastic garbage bags, and left it in the sun to heat set and let the ice melt. We were all concentrating on the work, so I did not get pictures of the process, only some of the results, as we put the fabric in zip-lock bags to take home. Barb started out silk screening a hand carved flower stencil onto some lime green fabric, after it dried she used Shiva oil pastels to rub a large grid onto the fabric. Jana and Peggy used declourant plus to stencil, onto T-shirts. Amy used plain decolourant to stencil on several t-shirts, a spirograph pattern on a red T, and birch trees on a navy T. Meredith used the discharge paste to brush paint over previously quilted sections of fabric, creating a deep relief pattern of the quilting. Finally, Pat, Nancy and Vera played with bleeding tissue paper, applying it with water to white cotton handkerchiefs. They lay overlapping ripped pieces, to cover the cotton. Left to dry, then removing the tissue, it left a colorful pattern on the fabric. Nancy and Pat painted a fixative over the fabric, we'll see how it works out. Amy removed the tissue and rinsed hers when she got home, and the color almost all disappeared. A great time was had by all, and many fun techniques were tried. Show and tell at the next meeting will be exciting! Thank you everyone who participated, for being so creative.