bathroom tiles and gold fabric paint

Hello. It's Monday and that means Blogday. Here is a picture of one of my experiments with metallic gold fabric paint mixed with black on silk. I am trying to see how much metallic paint can be diluted with another color and still retain the metallic effect. So far the answer is- a lot. I have even rinsed brushes that I used in the gold paint and then used the rinse water to pass over silk and a fine dusting remains which is then heat set with great results. So my findings to date are that even less than 20% pigment gives good results which is what they advertise about their product which is Jacquard Fabric Paints.

Here is Steve in the bathtub starting to put the tiles on the wall. If any of you have every BEEN in our bathtub/shower you will remember what it was like before this. Very scary place.

Large section part way done. It's going to be nice! I am planning on using grout that is scum colored for obvious reasons. I asked the Home Depot guy which gray looks most like scum and he didn't even stop and look at me or smirk or balk but said something like "you'd be safe with this one or this one. " Maybe this is a question he gets a lot of the time. I do plan on reforming my ways with this new redo. Some day we may get a water softener so that this is not an issue. Someday.

Have a great week everyone. Happy dyeing.

No fabric but pics of the kids!

Okay, so I don't have any fabric pictures to show you this Monday but I do have some pics of my kids (who are adults). Be grateful I'm not posting vacation slides.

This is Joel sitting on a tractor. We started taking pics of him on large scale machinery at an early age (and his sister too) which is all a part of living in rural America I suppose.

Here is Marcail. She got those glasses when she lived in Japan. What you do is go down to the train station and it takes "about an hour" but only costs you $50.00 if you have health insurance there. She got those teeth when she was in elementary school and it was more than $50.00 and took more than an hour. She is living in France at the moment slopping hogs, drinking champagne, and composting. Perhaps all at the same time. I'm so proud!

Joel again when he worked on a TV show about celebrity rappers. There are other scary pictures of him doing this gig but I find them too alarming to post here. Handsome is as handsome does.

That's enough about the fam. Sometime I should post a pic of Steve. He is currently fixing the tile in the bathroom which would make a great picture. Maybe next time.

I do have a large silk dyeing project to start tomorrow so if I think of it, I will take some pictures for you to see.

Self Disclosure!

In the Cotton Dyeing class, we have been talking about my mountain of extra or "dud" fabs. Here is a picture of it all! Yes, much of it is very usable and will be used in fiber art work that I will do sometime in the near, and not so near future, and some of it will get sold or donated to auctions or other artist friends who are "needy". I should iron and fold it and put it neatly away. Yeah, right. I just read that the word "should" is Anglo Saxon and came from the word "scold". Perfect. Okay...let's move to the next thing I will confess to you- my recipe books...

Here are a few of my most used recipe books. If you are starting to purchase my Dye Studio Workbooks, you won't be like me and be so disorganized about this aspect of the process. You will be able to keep the books clean and your notes much more concise.

Here is one of the easier pages to read. Things to note and NOT do...make sure you attach the fabric swatch to the page and do not wad it up like this. If you leave it loose and then drop the book, you run the risk of all the fabric falling out and not knowing where the samples go.

This page is a bit more complex to read in that I have a number of different silks on the same page so I can see the difference the same dye bath makes when using different weights silk.

This is the worst (or best) example of a hard to read page in that I have multiple ways to do the same thing and the adjustments I have made to that recipe over the years. I know what to do and where to look but someone who would want to use this page would never be able to figure out my calculations. Maybe that's a good thing???

I hope that you are able to be much more organized than I am.

Happy dyeing!

Develpment of an idea- continued

The next thing I needed to do with this fish overlay piece is dye the two best overlays I have found so far. The netting just didn't do it for me but it may in a future piece so thank you Lousie for the idea. I have been doing a lot of olive green dyeing lately so into the tub went the silk gauze and the cheesecloth.

Hard to see the cheesecloth from this distance but I really love the rustic look of it and the loose weave. This has possibilities. It dyes SO beautifully. In the new class that I will be developing for Quilt University, cheesecloth will be on the list of "Fantastic Fibers" we play with along with bamboo and on and on...but... I digress...

Here is a closer look at the dyed cheesecloth.

Next up is the dyed silk gauze. This, while fairly dense, is beautiful as well. I like the contrast that happens in the spots where the coi have broken through the water. You lose that with the cheesecloth.

Detail of the silk gauze.

So my next round of work on this piece will be to make more lily pads and pin them onto each overlay and make a decision. Next week- what I decided.

Thanks for looking!