Wednesday at the Barn
More dyeing today.
I clamped a very large piece of silk I’ve had for many years, really rather afraid to cut into it. Next week is the clamp and dye week; this week is focused on putting on color and then taking off and then putting it back on again. As I wrote that, it sounds somewhat like piecing quilts–but then quilting began as a thrift thing or functional thing but has now grown into something quite different.
We had splatters of rain through the day and the sewing class would remark to us with a bit of panic that it seeme to be raining and our fabric might be getting wet—and of course, to me, it meant another rinse cycle without any work on my part.
Today’s project was a vat dye; this is an interesting process with the dye present in a reduced form and then oxidizing on the surface as it removes previous dye. Indigo is the same kind of process. Our color choice today was orange-and so I did several pieces of orange—-not my favorite color but very striking on the lavendar hand-dyes. It will make great fabric to cut up and use in pieceing.
Sylvia Weir Art 