Sourcing media for my practical work and dyeing

In readiness to prepare the practical work I have purchased items during the last few days including

second hang cotton sheet and 2 bolster cases again in cotton
concentrated water colour
indigo blue ink
recycled paper that looks hand made
charcoal
block printing in black and orange

The cotton sheet is to be ripped into strips for dyeing.   The 2 bolster cases will also be dyed but I'm not yet sure how i'm going to use them.

I have a friend who has an ideal garden for dyeing fabric with an outside tap.   So I trekked off their yesterday (Sunday 27th April).   I mixed up the procion dyes in the colours I had available to me which were yellow, butt yellow, black, brown and navy.   I then had hours of dyeing the fabrics I had purchased.   I started out quite sensible and doing as I did at College, dipping and a bit of scrunching.   However my friend did a small tester and just got more experiemental and messier than I did!   She folded up the fabric when it was wet, she scrunched it and produced an amazing sample.   She inspired me to get a more creative and experimental.  

gathering a variety of buckets without holes I put water in and added 1 teaspoon of dye and stirred - I also added a good teaspoon of salt as well

this was achieved by using seaweed dipped into dye and then dragged across the fabric.  I repeated this using several dyes 

this is one of the plainer pieces - you can just see there are yellow parts to it and this is accidental where the piece was drying on the washing line and another yellow piece blew into it - a happy accident as the red and yellow make up the sunset colours I have been trying to recreate 

for this effect I folder a strip of the cotton fabric over and over until it was small and then folded it width ways and then dipped the fabric on the end and in the middle when it was opened up I had lines 

to get this effect I used two pieces of fabric which I was in the process of dyeing and I dabbed them onto this plain white strip.  Finally using hte seaweed I dipped and dragged it along the fabric being careful not to overdo it 

dipping seaweed and dragging it down the fabric 

I was hoping to be able to press the seaweed onto the fabric to get a good shape but this didn't work and it came out as a blob.   Even when I was using charcoal over a piece of fabric which was over the seaweed it still didn't come out as clear as I'd have liked

Reflection

I forgot to bring some red procion dye which wasn't helpful.   However my friend produced a pack of red Dylon which did the job. 

I feel I was not thinking out of the box enough until my friend took a piece of fabric and did things I hadn't thought of.   It wasn't rocket science, but I was just thinking literally.   

When I had finished yesterday I wasn't sure I'd gotten what I set out to, but on reflection, I have got better results that I expected.   Again, I was thinking  quite narrowly and maybe trying to do a literal response to the sunset.  For example one piece I have done is brown that looks like rust on a building.  I didn't plan that, however that will now be turned into a piece a war bunker that I photographed on the beach.   




http://heritageofwalesnews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/local-people-help-to-reveal-wartime.html

my photograph one one of the buildings