October is a Wonderful Time for Dyeing

The air has been crisp, and the sky bright many of these October days as I begin my day high up on the hill behind my house practicing Tai Chi. The hills have had their phase of mad wild color celebrating the end of harvest season. The mountains a multidude of color accented dramatically by the abundant clouds. I have enjoyed absorbing the warm air and sun rays to start my day, but lately the morning have been darker, damp and cool, hopefully giving way to sun as it climbs higher in the sky, the angle of light changing daily.
Not too hot, the mosquitos and flies gone, it is a wonderful time for dyeing cloth! I have my tubs of dye and the rinse sink out next to our home and can drip to my heart's content. All kinds of fabric items are being dyed now from batik hangings to scarves and various sizes of puses.
Our faithful jersey cow, "Steppin Up," is home for a short vacation, (her dry period, getting her baby ready the last weeks before calving), before going back to the barn where she milks. She watches the proceeding with a calm interest. You will notice the fence is used for a temporary clothes line for my items to drip dry. I am grateful for this time to expand into the yard and do my batik in the warm sun.

After the Rain!!!!!!!!!!

The rain has been continuously with us since Irene hit and devastated so many of our neighbors. The hot sunny mornings have vanished into mornings of gloom. Still there is lots of beauty in my surroundings as the water gives it's accents to the cherry tomatoes, asparagus ferns, rasberries, trumpet vine and roses.

The colors are also beginning to come to the fall change and there are hints of yellows, reds, oranges and browns.

The Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival held the end of September at the Washington County Fairgrounds was filled with beautiful animals and so many fine things. Lots of wonderful people visited and I had fun talking with customers and neighbors.

I brought many of my small prints and cards to Gardenworks this week. What a gorgeous store it is! The big old barn filled with flowers, plants, unique farm oriented gifts and a lovely gallery upstairs amidst the dried flowers below the massive old beams. I love to have my work there because it is in farm country, 1055 route 30, Salem, New York. And yes, Amity Farm Batik has lots of "farmscapes," garden scenes, as well as horses and some unicorns also have been known to appear. It is the perfect place for my work to be.

A Drop of Water Hit by the Sun

A drop of water is hit by the sun as I stand on the hilltop behind my house. It turns red, green, and then becomes a prism of color before the sun's angle changes and it is gone. I love to start my free mornings practicing Tai Chi up here and absorbing the sun, air, and space. The dew is heavy and my feet are wet from the dew as I practice the gentle movements of Tai Chi. I leave the hill, refreshed and limber and head back to my studio to work on my batik and other fabric items for the Fiber Festival to be held in the Washington County Fairgrounds, September24th and 25th. Here my rolled silk hangs waiting to be attatched to my now unfinished batik. Partly finished batik and purses wait for the finishing touches.My brushes lie waiting to apply dyes to my scarves and my wood creatures from my Dad's sawmill in days long, gone sit by and watch over all.

August Moon

The August moon rises brightly, almost full, full after midnight, after August 13 begins. I am lured up the hill behind my house by it's brilliance. It feels great to be out on this super clear night. The day was crisp, bright, hot and now the air is cooler, clear and still. At the top of the hill I can see the farms and homes scattered throughout the valley. Their small golden lights are on, signaling the contended end to a long day. Layers of mountains can faintly be seen with small strings of lights in distant villages tucked in between the hills. A train passes and gives it's lonely sounding call as it snakes it's way through the valley. The night sounds of life are so intense this time of year. Insects and frogs speak in a loud chorus echoing through the trees and fields. One especially, eek eek eek- eek eek eek- eek eek is repeated endlessly and from all directions till dawn. A meteor shower is expected later, closer to morning. Although it sounds spectacular, I'll miss it.

I return to my studio to work in the cool evening hours. I'd like to share some of my full moon batik with you. My "Stallion on an Eluive Evening" is bathed in moonlight. My "Red Dragon Breaths Arrows" about the moon. "Mirror Image Goats" has a mysterious feel of a blue green moon. "Pan calls the Moon from the Zebra's Back" and "Unicorns Rise from the Earth in Dreams."

A spring post also features the moon with the batik "Moon Over Spring" and others. The moon has a strong effect on me and is a great inspiration.

Losing the color!

It's was a beautiful August morning. Hazy and not too hot. The gentle breezes felt good as I stood at the top of the hill behind our house. Mist slowly rose and changed the soft colors of the expansive view. The mountains, arranged in subtle layers of blues, greens and purple. Birds and insects fill the air with their music. There is so much life this time of year.
Back at home, I'm contemplating the colors I want in several batik that have already gone through many dyebaths. As the dyes are translucent there are limits to overlays of opposite colors . In order to achieve what I want it will be necessary to bleach out some areas before the desired color can be added.

The summer weather is the best for doing discharge dyeing (bleaching). This is something not to be done inside. The bleach, which removes the color wherever the wax has not been applied to save the design, has quite strong fumes. To stop the bleaching action, the fabric is plunged into a solution of water and vinegar, gently agitated and left there for approximately fifteen minutes. This produces more toxic fumes. The commercial product, "Bleach Stop", sodium thiosulfate crystals are even more effective, but I believe have stronger fumes. A respirator mask is recommended when working around toxic fumes and good ventilation is essential.

Different dyes and intensities of dye bleach in a variety of unpredictable ways. When using strong solutions for bleaching deep colors be extra careful. Acid and Chlorine combined can kill! Monitor and stir the fabric as it bleaches. Various fabrics and dyelots take different times. Blue seems to bleach out overly quickly and thoroughly. Some colors change to a new color and not beige or white. Silk can stand only very weak bleaching without causing the fabric to deteriorate. Vinegar has an additional bleaching action and results are unpredictable as well as fascinating. The photos show a mask, a batik before bleaching, in the bleaching tub, after bleaching and finally you can see my "Appaloosa Horse in Flower Field" after the re-dyeing and with the wax ironed out, bright and expressing the summer season.

Too Hot for Hot Wax

It's Summer! July 26th. The days will be getting slightly shorter now, but it is also so much hotter. Too hot for hot wax!

Some days are too hot to work upstairs in my studio so I move downstairs to the garage where there is shade and a nice cross breeze to work in. I like to get up early this time of year to enjoy the early morning coolness and the sunrise. It's also nice to get as much of the heat producing work done early. The mornings are cool and fresh. I'm thinking of gardens now and two new batik are pictured here, veggies in rain and veggies in sun.

My grey and calico friends are happy I'm doing my batik, as am I. You can see in these pictures my stretching table set ups. I have a compact wooden section for moderate sized pieces, you can see in the photo with me wearing green. This can be propped forward with bricks and very small pieces can be tacked in place for wax application. Fabric can also be stretched much farther back toward the wall to do very large pieces of fabric (see photo with the long batik tacked very high and at the bottom right a bricks in between that can create a very short section to work on small batik. Downstairs in the garage a different way of tacking up the fabric can be seen. I have moved down into the garage in order to be a bit cooler. The pan of hot wax still causes me to work in the evening and early morning. The drawback of course is the mosquitoes, gnats, moths and other miscellaneous flying creatures in the garage. Ironing has been moved outdoors for the summer and is done also morning and late in the day.

The photos also show me using the tjanting tool, a brass or copper bowl that has a spout and enables me to make lines of wax. There are different sizes of spouts that make smaller and larger lines. (See photo of my electric frying pan with full range of brushes and tjantings that I use.)The larger spout requires me to work very fast. In one picture you can see a cloth in my left hand. The cloth is there to can drops of wax from falling where they shouldn't. It doesn't stop flowing until all is used or it gets too cool. The larger spout has the most and fastest drops. At some point I will try a larger electric tjanting, but for now I dip the tjanting into an electric frying pan holding hot wax at a steady temperature. You can see another smaller pan that holds soy wax. Soy wax is a soft vegetable wax. It does not give as crisp, clear a line as my beeswax and paraffin mix. It also takes a little bit of dye into itself that gives light shades of color to the areas it has been applied to. Delicate and not as resilient as my other wax mix, it has an advantage of being able to be washed out of fabric in very hot water and detergent. Very hot is the key here.

The brush is shown applying wax as well. I have many sizes and shapes, but it does not pay to buy expensive brushes as the hot wax can and does burn the bristles back. It is best to not leave brushes or the tjantings sitting in the wax. Different wax has slightly different temperatures that are best to work with. The "flash point" must be avoided. Wax is extremely flammable.

I will post more on the batik process soon. Hope this can help you get started or give some new ideas.

Dyeing's Not so Bad

The mixing of dye is time consuming for me and I am careful to add what needs to be added, (casolene oil, urea, water softener and more) to help the dyes to be vibrant and mesh well with the cloth. I also strain the mix through an old cloth so there won't be any "flecks" of dye that did not mix well.

Dyeing is not so bad though. I actually love to dye fabric. Back to basics of fabric. Before any artwork is done on cloth it must be scoured with detergent in hot water to remove any sizing and shrink it. Natural cotton is the fabric I use for most my batik but I also paint on silk, a more delicate fabric. After the first stage design has been painted or applied with a tjanting I wet the fabric before immersing in the dye bath. Once in the dye bath the fabric needs to be gently moved ( gently so as to not damage the wax). See my last post for information on mixing dye. The temperature for batik is slightly warm for best absorption of color without melting the wax. Cold water may be used, but the colors won't be as bright and it will need to be in the dye bath much longer. The color should be checked when stirring and realize the color will appear much lighter when dry.

Soda ash must be added to the dye bath to activate the dye. A formula for 1 pound of fabric is;

3 gallons of warm water, 1 tablespoon dye, for more intense colors, 2 tablespoons dye and 3 to 4 tablespoons for very dark colors such as black and navy. Plain salt is added at 3 cups and increased with darker shades. 1/3 cup of soda ash is also added and 2 teaspoons of calsolene oil makes for better dissolving of dye. Once the soda ash is added, the life of the dye is limited by a few hours, so be sure to be ready to dye! For light colors the fabric can stay immersed for 20 minutes to half an hour. A dark shade would benefit from an hour or more in the dye bath. A large piece of fabric or several pieces can be dyed in the washing machine, just keep control so as to not have the dye spun out prematurely.

When the color has reached a darker shade than you feel you want, it is time to rinse out the excess dye. I like to rinse in an old sink outdoors (see photos of my Flower sink and the day lillies to go with it!)I also like to dye fabric in the warm months outdoors so I can spill and not have a speckled home. Rinse, rinse and rinse. Then let dry. the cloth may lie flat or hang on a line ( some separating of color can occur while hanging so be careful). For dark colors a slower drying helps to keep the color brilliant. Put the fabric in plastic for a very slow dry. When dry apply the next stage of wax with brush or tjanting to the areas you want to remain the newly dyed color, and repeat the process.
An alternative process to adding soda ash to the dye is to leave it out of the dye bath but soak the fabric in a soda ash mix, let drain an then immerse in the dye bath. This method allows the mixed dye a longer life. Urea added also increases the life of dye. You should be able to dye many smaller pieces over about a week, instead of all at once.

I use small and large tubs to dye in and have a long flat plastic container for large pieces that I don't wish to have crumpled, which could result in excess crackling of the wax. Most my summer work is quite large in size, taking advantage of the space in the great outdoors. In the winter I work on smaller pieces as well as scarves and purses that only need small tubs to be dyed.

My supply sources are http://www.dharmatradingcompany.com/ in San Rafael, California,which has a tremendous selection of dyeing supplies and fabric as well as good directions in their catalog. Also http://www.prochemical.com/ , Somerset, Massachusetts also a large selection of dyeing supplies. They also sponsor some excellent workshops. workshops@prochemical.com. Both have good technical advice available.

See the photos to see me dyeing some of my large pieces. Always be aware of the translucent nature of dye. Each color is affected by the previous colors. The images pictured are in the middle stages of completion. I will have more on the batik process in future posts. Meanwhile I hope this imformation helps. Happy Dyeing!