Batik Fabrics ....and a little bit of time management

I had a really good morning today at Rikki Outis's class at Cottenham. Today we had a go at batik and I used several of the fabrics I have dyed in the last few weeks. Rikki uses soy wax as it is easier to get it out of the fabric. She had some melting in a large electric frying pan (skillet) and some in a melting pot which is good if you want to use a jantung.
I started off by cutting a stencil and then painting on the wax in a spiral design. (later, I over painted it with blue and red)


The next fabric I simply scrunched up and dabbed the wax onto it to create random texture. (I splodged red and purple dyes onto to this piece later on) There are so many ways to create gorgeous patterns using wax 

 The yellow sample was folded in a concertina fashion and the edges dipped in the hot wax. I opened it, let it cool and then re-folded in the opposite direction and re-dipped it. (It was later painted with teal and blue
The flowery piece was made by brushing on the wax onto pale pink fabric. (It was later painted with yellow and red)
I allowed them all to dry hard and then later, I painted them with soda ash and then with the Procion dyes we have used before. It was so lovely sitting on the grass under the apple tree doing this this evening. It is so warm here in Cambridge right now....I'm making the most of it while it lasts.
 
Time Management......

 I am enjoying Kelly Rae's class and today she talked about time management and asked us for our ideas too so here is what I learnt when I had my machine knitting business, Tiny Tiger, when my own children were small.  I was really keen to be there as a mummy to them and always wanted to be sure to be at the school gate to collect them as I had come home to an empty house as a child after my dad died and my mum had to work. What matters is what matters to you, not what you think other people think you should do, and it mattered to me to be there.


Gareth was two when I started my machine knitting business and Claire was already at school. At first I was making ALL the jumper myself so time was precious...at a premium...so as soon as he was in nursery school I would shoot home straight to my work room (where I had tea and coffee making stuff VITAL...no wasting time going to the kitchen) and spent the morning knitting. I never allowed myself to wash up dishes, tidy the kitchen, iron, clean.....I just got on with making. I love working under a controlled amount of pressure and I was motivated to try and beat my own record of how many jerseys I could make in one session! I also got it down to a fine art when he was in the bath...I could knit a WHOLE age 2 jumper while he was content playing, and turning wrinkly-fingered! Oh it was blissful....he was content and I was productive.


As the children got older, we had a family housework hour on a Sunday afternoon. The radio was turned on full blast and everyone had a job...Claire would sweep and wash the kitchen floor, Gareth would hoover downstaires, I cleaned the lavs and Tony would clean the shower. It worked well and got the job done quickly. Claire also used to do the ironing in return for her pony's keep which seemed a fair exchange. Having our business did mean they both had a good lifestyle.


There were so many other ways I managed my time but right now, it is 9.30pm and a really gorgeous evening and as Tony is hankering for a walk to the nearest pub garden to cool off, I'm going to join him!






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Setting the Rainbow Free.....

Well, if you look at yesterdays's blog you will see that I have cheated and not managed to leave the fabrics in the procion dyes for 48 hours. Oh dear! The jar started to look like it was getting muddy and I was worried I would end up with brown colurs so I whipped it out after 12 hours and was pleased to see the result. It is one long continuous piece of cloth which I have pleated here for the photo. Here is a link to another fabric dyeing book

I did manage to leave this for 48 hours and it has turned out quite well. I will have fun printing onto it or using it at next week's class when we do some batik

I was really pleased with this matching space dyed tape. I bought reels and reels of white tape many years ago at a car boot sale....the sort of thing you buy because it might come in useful one day! I like to use the computer to print onto it for my scrapbooking pages, particularly the wider size. I was hoping to put my instructions for printing onto tape here but cant find them yet!
Will update if I do

Dyeing the Colour Wheel

Now then.....this is my kinda washing....a gorgeous line of colourful fabrics....the whole spectrum fluttering in the breeze. I dyed them on a course at Cottenham yesterday morning with Rikki Outis. Thank you Rikki!

The inner circle show the basic colour wheel....I did that first and then a further 6 colours were mixed to produce these glorious fabrics.

Method
for the basic colour wheelFabric was cut into 6x25cm squares (I used old white cotton sheeting as always!) and then it was soaked for 15 minutes in a soda ash solution to prepare it for dyeing

Meanwhile, we started by mixing 2 primary colours...each in 1 cup of cold water:
3 level teasp yellow (I used 4G)
2 level teasp blue (I used turquoise)
1 level teasp red (I used magenta)

To make the inner circle of colours (green orange and purple) we made three mixes as follows:
10ml red
+50ml yellow

40 ml yellow
+20ml blue

30 ml red+
30ml blue

Immerse each piece of fabric  in one of the 6 dye solutions for a minute, turning it over and make sure it is evenly dyed. Lightly squeeze and then place in a plastic bag. Now...BE PATIENT!

Leave for at least 2 hours but preferably 24-48 hours (Must admit there is NO WAY I could ever do that!!!!!)

I have not included the further mixes for the other 6 colours here

Rinse each of the colours out in plenty of cold water and then finally wack into the washing machine (I did NOT add the yellow!) Chuck in a couple of colour catchers and wash with mild detergent.Better still, use a speciality product such as Synthrapol.

Note to self: NO NEED to add quite so much Dreft another time! The poor washing machine spewed suds from every orifice!!!!! Happily, Tony was at work and I was able to clean up the evidence before he was home.

Oh....now that my energy is returning and BOY it has taken so long.....(still can't taste and smell) I rustled up 9 of these bags for our local hospital. They are for mastectomy patients for the drainage bags they have following sugery. They have a lovely long strap so it worn over the shoulder. This is my first batch. I have about 7 more half made because I cut out so many bags and didn't leave enough fabric to make the straps! Oh dear....I'm going to have to find a plain colour to use instead.

A couple of the members of our quilt group Cambridge Quilters have been patients there and now the group is very active in producing these, and the most delightful heart shaped cushions for under the arm of the affected side.