Ombre Or What Would You Call It?

Ombre thread included in New Age Looping Basics eCourse starter kit

For looping, I like threads that give me color with some highlights and depth -- something more subtle than space-dyed yarns, which are often a bit stripey. The term I came up with for these hand-dyed fibers is ombre, but what do you think?

I've always understood ombre (sorry, can't figure out how to accent the e) to refer to a yarn or fabric that varies in shade or tone. But just to be sure, I googled the term to check my usage while writing the description of materials in the starter kit for my New Age Looping Basics eCourse. What I found wasn't what I expected. But now I know that ombre is the latest rage among celebrity hair styles.

Years ago, when my passion for dyeing mostly applied to Easter eggs and my own hair, the dip dyed look was something to avoid. I won't be posting pics of my bleached blonde days. Just assume I looked very, very cool.

Maybe we should put our heads together (whatever color they may be now), flip through some old photos for styles we never expect to see again, and try to come up with the Next Big Thing. Any ideas?

Surface Design Smackdown: Paint vs. Dye

Call it "telephone tag" for the digital age: My friend Anne sent me a question about Dye-na-Flow. We've been back and forth with short Facebook messages exchanges, but haven't connected yet to talk about her question. She's far from alone in her puzzlement, so I guess it's time for a Surface Design Smackdown: Paint vs. Dye.

Anne wrote that she had sampled Dye-na-Flow on silk scarves "following all the directions." While she could see many possibilities for the product, she didn't like that it "leaves my fabric somewhat stiff, especially silk. Is this the nature of the beast, or is there something I could do to remedy the situation?"

She's not imagining this. Despite its name, Dye-na-flow is a fabric paint. Click to keep reading.

Like other paints, Dye-na-Flow sits on the surface instead of bonding on a molecular level as a dye would. That affects the hand of the fabric. It also affects the reflective quality of some fabrics, particularly silks.

Silk is the fabric of choice for many projects because of the way it reflects light. You can get plenty of "shiny" synthetics, but silk owns the territory around "luminous." When you want to preserve the softness and luster of silk, you may want to choose acid dye instead of paint. You can read about my acid redux dyeing adventures here.

Silk and wool love dye, and acid dyes make coloring silk almost as easy as spilling red wine on a white silk blouse. You can find complete acid dye instructions here, here and here. Don't let the steaming throw you. You can boil water. You can follow directions. You can do this.

But don't throw out your Dye-na-flow! This is my go-to product for many projects, including silk.

You can use it for heliographic printing and inkjet transparency transfers.

Dye-na-Flow makes it unbelievably easy to make a "crackle" style fabric. This is a technique I use a lot in classes. All you do is mix paints (from primaries, white and black or pewter) to get the color you want, slosh the paint onto barely-damp fabric, and leave it crumpled up to dry.

Gravity pulls the water in the paint down, leaving higher concentrations of pigment on the high points.

When the fabric is dry, heat set it with a dry iron on the hottest setting the fabric will accept to fix the paint. Then wash the fabric in mild soap, and maybe rinse it with some hair conditioner.

Dye-na-Flow is brilliant for a lot of other applications, including giving embroidery floss and other threads a quick color boost. And it works on a lot of different fabric types, not just protein fibers.

I like products that are really versatile, and products that are really simple. Dye-na-Flow is both. Acid dyes are not as versatile, but you don't have to keep the whole color collection on hand: Mix what you need from the primary colors, and revel in the undiminished luster of your hand-dyed silk fabric, yarn, ribbon and thread.

I root for both of them. How about you?

Hats Off

Paperwork, mending, and a to-do list don't make exciting blog posts. But last week I tied up a lot of loose ends, did a bunch of mending, and got a birthday gift in the mail almost on time.

The gift isn't what I had planned to make. But right before I headed out to the studio to execute my plan, I saw a girl on TV wearing a beret and wheels started turning.

There was a once-white beret bought at a thrift shop in my studio stash, as well as a charcoal gray wool sweater, also thrifted. Both had been through the wash: That's SOP for thrifted stuff before it goes into the stash.

I used a wide zig-zag stitch to apply random appliques of the charcoal wool to the hat, and added extra lines of stitching. Acid dye and a quick steam transformed the color from once-white to amethyst. About this time I realized the flaw in my plan: I'd been hoping to get this gift in the mail the same day. When I switched from Plan A to Plan Beret, I skipped right over Dry Time.

Bill came to my rescue. It was a sunny day with a nice breeze. He suggested putting the piece on the hood of his black pick-up truck to speed up the drying time.

Worked like a charm. I pinned it to a towel secured under the windshield wiper and left it there over lunch. In just over an hour, it was dry enough to pin to the clothesline without stretching. It finished drying quickly, and I was able to get it wrapped, boxed, and to the post office that afternoon.

Next up on my gift to-do list are pieces for my sister and my mom. Must put "find the materials set aside for these" on my to-do list.

Down To Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day, here's a peek at some of the recycled materials in pieces I'm working on for Night Vision, a celebration of how sleep and dreams can bring transformation and renewal. So far, all the materials in this body of work except thread have come from my stash or my closet, or been purchased at garage sales or thrift shops. It's surprisingly easy and very satisfying to transform fabric you have into fabric you use with a few surface design techniques.

Night Owl includes an old pillowcase simmered with bark and old chain, an old tablecloth altered with Procion MX dyes, and an indigo-dyed piece of muslin.

To work out ideas for the design, I used recycled magazine paper. At a later stage, I stabilized an edge with horsehair braid bought at a garage sale still attached to fabric. (Whoever shortened a bridesmaid or prom dress and saved the stiffener -- thank you!)

Dreamcatcher includes another old pillowcase. My mother worked so hard when I was a kid to keep our sheets from turning orange from the iron in our water, and now I do it on purpose. I also used some silk scraps from my Black Hole, and flannel and cotton quilt blocks (given to me by a friend) that I overdyed with indigo.

The rust-colored piece above is the leg from a white wool suit handed down to me by my mom several years ago. After an introduction to some acid dye, it ended up in piece called AfterMath.

I can't talk about this work without mentioning how much I loved the recycled feedsack PJs my grandma used to make for me when I was a kid. If only I could get my hands on some of those old feedsacks now...

Project Runaway

The thought has crossed my mind that I should run away and join the circus. Surely I've been preparing for that type of career, or I would not have acquired quite so much bright coral clothing in my wardrobe.

Yes, much of it has been there since the early 90s. More was purchased at thrift stores, probably from people who edit their closets more often than I do. I love the color, but it does not flatter me.

There's really no excuse for it, since it's not like I don't have plenty of dye on hand. So a couple of weeks ago I threw together two buckets and a washer load of dye and altered the lot of it. And that big bag in the background is stuff there was no point messing with. It's going to the thrift shop tomorrow.

There were several times this past week when I wished I still had the Coral Collection so I could run off and join the circus. I'd rather have been under the Big Top or in my studio, but I spent the week staring at the computer. I can now produce screen capture videos, thank you very much. I think I've settled on a platform for e-courses I'm developing (thanks to my friend and tech guru, Tony). I made progress on a bunch of things that aren't quite as satisfying as dyeing a whole bunch of clothes.

Then I rewarded myself by watching old episodes of Project Runway on DVDs from the library. I'm still waiting to see them get the Coral Challenge.

Bark Soup

Last week I spent some time testing ways to speed up a process that is mindlessly simple when you don't care how long it takes. For years, beautiful color and intriguing patterns have been a side benefit from using old dish towels to mellow bark for weaving. The longer you leave bark tightly rolled up in damp fabric, the better. After removing the bark from the fabric, the longer you leave it before washing, the better.

It's a lazy way to do things and thus perfect for me. Nevertheless, I wanted to test the adage "heat = time" as it relates to bark + cotton.

The first step was to narrow down my choices. In a couple of minutes I gathered willow bark, cedar bark, birch bark, elm bark, spruce bark, white pine bark, cherry bark, black walnut shavings, and a couple of barks I can't identify because, duh, I didn't label them. It would probably have been smarter to test methodically and compare with known results from the slow-and-lazy approach. Of course it would. Instead, I chose the two I was most unfamiliar with -- elm bark and black walnut shavings.

The night before my experiment, I put the elm bark in to soak in plain water.

At the same time, I put the black walnut shavings to soak in an old iron kettle, hoping to get enough mineral leach to darken the color. While I was at it, I wrapped up a couple of fabric bundles and let them soak overnight in the kettle.

The next day, I transferred the elm bark and soaking water to an enamel pot, threw a length of chain on top to weigh down the fabric and interact with the tannin to yield a darker color. After simmering for about an hour, I removed the fabric. I saved the elm bark soup in another container, then transferred the black walnut stew from the iron kettle (which won't sit on my hot plate) into the enamel pot. Since the chain was already there and worked so well to hold the bundles down, it went back in.

While neither method produced results of heartstopping beauty, I didn't really expect them to. But they produced a modest amount of color and pattern, and thoroughly tannin-infused fabrics that took mineral printing well. More on that next time, along with (I hope) shots of fabrics I overdyed in the indigo vat before I remembered to take pictures. That fabric is in the wash now.

I saved all the iron-rich bark soup in a plastic jug, and now I'm contemplating whether I should add a tiny bit of sugar and yeast to kick-start some fermentation. Any thoughts or advice before I try to explain this wild hair to my husband?

Fairy Godmother Makes An Offer

Do you ever get those blinding moments of clarity that only come in the shower? Yesterday I had a mini ah-ha moment while rinsing more indigo-dyed fabric. I wasn't looking for it. Truly, I was just wanting the water to run clear.

On Reflection by Donna Kallner

Water and its power to reflect has been much on my mind lately. Here's what was in my head while I was working on a piece called On Reflection for a show called A Woman's Perspective On The Elements:

Once upon a time, a girl might gaze into a pool of water to glimpse some bright possibility. Nowadays, girls are surrounded by mirrors that seem to reflect only flaws. No evil enchantment could lock them more completely into a shining lie. A fairy godmother might be able to reveal hidden beauty with the wave of a wand. Lacking that implement, I use another ancient tool of transformation: With my needle, I try to mend the world by stitching layers of fabric and praying that some girl will see magic trickling along a crease, puddled in a corner.

So yesterday while I was rinsing it hit me: I need a new wardrobe. Does this make me sound shallow? No, don't answer that.

Last weekend I had a student coming for a studio weekend. On Friday afternoon, I went to put on my going-to-town jeans, which, besides my going-to-teach jeans are were the only ones I had without patches or stains. I'm hard on clothes, and hate to put much time or money into something that will soon be stained with dye or paint. But my wardrobe is used up. It's time to be my own fairy godmother and transform myself into someone who doesn't have to scramble at the last minute to find something decent to wear. I have a needle and I know how to use it. Heaven knows I have plenty of fabric on hand. This is feeling like the kind of "godfather" offer you can't refuse.

So it's time to put making a new wardrobe at the top of the list for a while. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

My Monday Morning Rinse & Revelation came about because I refreshed the indigo vat over the weekend. Judy has taken classes with me for more than 10 years. She was the only student for the weekend (having graciously changed dates to accommodate a private group), so we could do whatever we wanted. As I listed options, her eyes lit up on indigo and we had a plan.

On Friday night we painted fabric and made fiber phyllo to use on Saturday. On Saturday, she worked through the Constructed Vessels class.

On Sunday, we played with the indigo vat.

We also pulled out the Colorhue dyes and put color on silk in a very different way from what we did on Friday.

While the Colorhue dyes were out, I did some sampling on silk velvet.

On the left you see velvets with Colorhue dip-dyeing. Since the colors were already pretty dark (shown unaltered on the right), the results aren't dramatic. But I like the possibilities.

Yesterday seemed like a good day for task that weren't tasking. So I finally got a huge skein of cotton yarn I inherited rewound and ready for dyeing.

The last of a bunch of quilt blocks I inherited last summer got altered with indigo as well. Not that all of that stuff has been transformed, it's time to work on transforming my wardrobe. Much of it, I suspect, will be blue.

Acid Redux -- Silk, Wool And Dye

Thanks to a great find of percale sheets at the local thrift store (and I went back to get the pillowcases -- aka fat quarters), I ran out of room in mouseproof storage container space. Just thinking of mouse poop on hand-dyed fabric is enough to give anyone a seriously bad case of heartburn. I was able to empty one container I can use for fabric in Monday's paperwork purge, but that's not enough. So I started pulling stuff out of bins to figure this out, and found a lot of silk and wool begging for more color.

Some was fabric I had already dyed or painted but never got past the blah stage. Some was wool felt or fabric picked up at garage sales. Some was yardage -- really good fabrics I "inherited" from my friend Di's Aunt Mary. I know I'll never make garments from them, so might as well play with them and see what happens.

All this was stashed in bins waiting for me to decide what to make with it and to apply color accordingly. Trouble is, that's just not how I work most of the time. I'd much rather throw color around then step back and see what I find there. It's sort of like watching the sky and finding clouds shaped like ships or animals or faces. My favorite kind of challenge is to scrunch/slosh/spatter color, say "now what can I do with this", paint myself into a series of corners, and figure a way out from each one. That probably wouldn't read well on an artist statement, so mum's the word.

As long as the fabric was out, I started just dying the lot of it.

I presoak the wools and silks before dyeing (well, most of the time). That's what you see in the Santa container and the pink tub on the left. Since the Nesco was still set up from steaming the Top Shelf Dyes Procion H stuff, I pulled out the big recycled cookie tins, crammed in the soaked fabric, sloshed on Dharma acid dye mixed with hot water, covered the works with foil, and put stuff in to steam.

After desecrating a navy blue plaid I'm much happier with it. It's beautiful fabric, but do I look like a navy blue plaid person?

This fabric was from a hand-me-down white wool suit from my mother. Seriously: Me? White? Suit?

I have a bunch more silk to do yet, but made a start.

There's still plenty of plain-Jane white fabric for when I do need a fresh start. That's in two bins and a piece of repurposed luggage. But before long I may have to seriously reconsider how I manage these materials. I'm spending too much time digging through opaque containers looking for stuff. I would love to have things on open shelves sorted by color. The mice would love that, too, I'm sure, so it's not gonna happen.

Would that I could blow soap bubbles to encapsulate colorful stacks of fabric, to float around my studio where I would swat them out of the way to reach a different colorway or type of fabric. That's about as likely as buying all-new clear bins to replace the 20-year-old opaque ones that are still perfectly good.

Any suggestions?

Top Shelf Dyes Part 2

In Part 1, I shared a snow dyeing project I did last week (Sherri in Texas said it almost made her wish for snow). It was part of an effort to use up some discontinued Procion H dye concentrate. This week, I'm starting a piece from one of the fabrics I altered by printing and painting with Procion H mixed with shaving cream.

Shaving cream is great for faux marbling, which I like to do with Dharma Pigment Dyes. I can't remember where I read about mixing dye with shaving cream for screen printing, but I wanted to sample it.

So I mixed the Procion H concentrate with a little chemical water, added a bit of dissolved soda ash, then combined that mixture with shaving cream.

On half of a pre-dyed sheet (part of my 9 sheets for 5 bucks collection), I sampled two kinds of printing. First, I screened on a text element and one of my floral collage designs using Thermofax screens I made in a workshop with Stephanie Lewis Robertson at Sievers. Then I applied the shaving cream-dye mixture with a foam brush to a plastic tray (saved from one of my late mother-in-law's craft containers) and used that to stamp the fabric.

Then I folded the other half of the sheet over what I had printed, and just stamped it. While I was at it, I stamped a stray piece of plain white fabric.

After steaming, rinsing and washing, here's what the sheet looked like.

The sheet was slightly damp when I printed it, so the slight blurriness and color separation at the edges of the printing was what I expected. Most of the time, I prefer text that isn't readable, so I'm quite happy with this slapdash print job. If I wanted crisper edges and finer detail, I could mix up sodium alginate and thicken the dye with that instead of the shaving cream mixture.

The plain white fabric was completely dry when I printed with the shaving cream mixture. Here's how it looked after steaming, rinsing and washing.

Maybe I'm easily pleased, but I'm happy with the results here. Since it was so simple to print with the shaving cream mixture, I know I'll do it again.

On another pre-dyed sheet, I printed with two different Thermofax screens and the shaving cream-dye mixture. The first screen is one I made from a graphite pencil rubbing of the electric range burner in the Walter Studio at Sievers. Prints from the second screen, from a photograph of a tile wall, blurred quite a bit (this sheet was also dampish when I printed). On this piece, I also applied some of the shaving cream-dye mixture by piping it like cake filling from the snipped corner of a plastic baggie. Here's how it looked before steaming.

After steaming, rinsing and washing, it's not my favorite fabric but there are areas of interest that I can definitely use.

My favorite piece of last week wasn't one of the sheets. It was a piece of rayon from a long-ago ho-hum shibori attempt. Using the shaving cream-dye mixture on dry fabric, I sampled a slapdash Pellon stencil/screen idea. I won't bore you with the details because that was a total flop.

In no time, the Pellon soaked up the dye mixture. Oh well, I figured I couldn't mess it up worse than it was. So I started making marks with the shaving cream-dye mixture using the edge of a squeegee, then progressed to finger painting with it. Here's what it looked like after steaming, rinsing and washing.

That's the piece I'm going to work on this week. It has flaws, but I love it. So I'm going to make myself work fast and not get too invested in the piece. I need to just get back in the studio groove for the new year, and too-precious fabric is a hindrance rather than a help. At least, for me: Your mileage may vary.

Even with the extra steps to wrap and steam fabric printed with Procion H, I really do like the shaving cream-print method. I'll do it again. But jeepers, I just made a dent in the collection on that top shelf.

Got any wild-hair suggestions on other techniques to sample with it?

Top Shelf Dyes Part 1

When you're 5-feet-nothing, the phrase "top shelf" doesn't necessarily mean "of the best quality." Usually, it means "stuff you have to stand on a stool to get to so you don't mess with it very often." In my fall studio cleaning and dejunkifying, I realized I had better do something with the Procion H dyes on the top shelf of my dye cupboard.

The Backstory
These are the dyes Bill bought to color fabric backings for some of the woodland scenes he creates for his rustic furniture collection. We've canoed in tandem and remodeled together, so we know our limitations: There was no way I could see his vision for this fabric until he created it. "Oh, that's what you mean."

Woodland scene by Bill Kallner

Now that I understand, when he needs more fabric I'm happy to produce it. In the meantime, the dye is taking up space in the heated cabinet that lets me conserve energy in my studio, which leaks like a sieve.

So this week's project was to get rid of all the containers of Procion H mixed with chemical water how long ago? and figure out how I can reasonably use up the undiluted concentrates of these discontinued dyes before they lose effectiveness. I had a stack of old sheets ($5 for nine 100% cotton percale sheets at the thrift store), so no new fabric was harmed. And no people were harmed in this week of experimentation, although it may look like I committed a murder: The ketchup bottle in which Bill had mixed a red dye with chemical water leaked when I shook it. I should have known better than to shake it, or done this project at Halloween.

Snow Dyeing
But since it's winter and we have plenty of snow, I figured I might as well try snow dyeing with the mixed red. Compared to just pouring it down the drain, any color  it put on fabric would be a bonus.

I scrunched part of one sheet into a plastic tub, layered on snow and squirted the snow with dye mixture, then repeated the scrunch-snow-squirt procedure a couple of times. When it was all done, it didn't look like enough dye so I added some yellow and fuscia. I recognize the irony of mixing more dye for this.

After about an hour in my studio, the snow had solidified enough that I could tip up the container to let it drain so the dye wouldn't get too dilute.

There were still snow crystals in the middle a couple of hours later when I took it outside to open up. It needed to be hung up to drip. Instead of shoveling a path to the clothesline, I stuck some sticks into a pile the snowplow left by my studio.

I always wonder what my neighbors think when they see stuff like this in our yard.

The dye drips left behind seemed to go with the ketchup bottle splatter inside.

After the fabric was mostly done dripping, I hung it up in the studio to dry overnight. Then I steamed it on a rack in the Nesco (amazing what you can do with these things when you no longer keep them for cooking).

After steaming, rinsing and washing, here's what I got:

Next time, I'll show you some of the shaving cream printing and painting I did with the Procion dyes.

In the meantime, we wish you all a Happy New Year!