Dyeing in the Studio

I had a great time dyeing in my studio last night with my friend Heather! We were sort of trying to combine our knowledge, efforts and experience, plus try some new stuff too. I read about using soy wax as a resist. It's environmentally friendly, as it just washes out and it works pretty close to a traditional batik using petrolium based wax. I also wanted to try using white screen printing ink as a resist. Both of which we did last night! I did a couple of the "reveals" this morning, which were a bit disappointing, but I learned something. There is no "waste" here, just "starts" that can be overdyed in time...
This morning, I took some photos which I'll share here. Please note: everything is in the washer now and I realized once the washing cycle began, that I forgot to heat set the white screen printing ink. But! This might be a good thing, because I printed on a tan fabric, so now those areas would become tan, which might not be a bad thing...or better yet: it might stay in some areas and wash off in others. Again, I'm anxiously awaiting the result!
Here are the prewashed images:

This is some really cool fabric that my sister carries at The Seam Shoppe in Key West.

It comes in beige/white, so I thought I'd see what it looked like when dyed...

On this piece, I carved a stamp using the Artsy material available at Jerry's, then dipped it into the white screen printing ink and stamped the overall pattern onto a kind of beige linen. This was then dyed in a warm black dye topped with some orange. Nice! We'll see what happens with the ink after washing...

This one was started with white muslin. I originally did a similar stamped design as above using washable Elmer's glue as the resist. I then layed it on my table and squirted the dye onto the surface and covered it with plastic. I let it sit for 24 hours and oops! Little did I anticipate the glue would get all gooey and pretty much dissolved and when I washed out the fabric, I was left with a boring piece of turquoise fabric! So...that's what I used in experimenting with the soy wax. You set it up the same way as encaustic...melt it down and use it as a resist by painting or stamping it onto the cloth. Let that dry, then put in the dye bath. Voila!

Here are two more soy wax resist pieces.

These will need some more over dyeing and manipulating,

but I think we got a ton done in a short amount of time!

Heather also did this awesome piece using warm black dye and maybe another color??? But it really turned out fabulous. I did not get a photo last night, but her plan is to stretch it onto bars, then gesso with clear or maybe rabbit skin glue and paint on it! Oh the wonderful possibilities...

Can't wait to get back into the studio again!

Cheers!