New Love

Me and my man. 

I made this shirt this spring using a fold that I learned at Haystack with Michael Olszewski. When I taught it to my studio assistants we called it the Michael fold.  This summer I took Elin Nobles Fold and Clamp class at Pro Chem. It was wonderful and we learned this and many other folds. Ellen calls this one formerly known as the Michael fold  the rotating square.
The dropped pattern makes this really special to me. The shirt is a mystery fabric from Jomar, but this one was dyed with acid dyes so I suspect that it is silk.




Practice makes perfect... or at least gets you going again. These are a variety of fabrics soaking to wet out. I swore that I was going to start practicing as soon as I got home from the workshop so that I would be able to cement the new folds into my repertoire. The best laid plans... it was over a month until I got back to it and it was really a challenge for me to remember. So I spent two days folding these small pieces of ( yellow, viscose) white silk , White bamboo and silk and white cotton into the hemp fold. Here they are soaking in a plastic bin to wet out.

hemp folded pieces wetting out in plastic bin.

 Each took up the color in its own way. I knew this would happen but was still surprised at how different each was. The viscose dyes beautifully and swell up more than the others. The silk grabbed much more of the yellow in this dye bath. I learned form Jan Myers Newbury that silk grabs more of the dye or takes it up more quickly and that is why in her workshop we were only allowed to work with cotton. She also had us mix certain colors and the silk would take it up differently. This was demonstrated below.

all the pieces soaking in MX mix of yellows and green.

from left, cotton gauze, cotton, silk crepe, bamboo, all were white except for the yellow viscose

I changed the placement of the resists on each piece and then overdyed them. Will post the results tomorrow.  Even though I knew intellectually that they were going to take the dye differently it still surprised me.  The cotton gauze was much bluer than the broadcloth like cotton bandana. The silk was just so much more yellow. Never a dull moment in the dye studio.