EXPERIMENTING WITH COLOR WASH

In yesterday's post I shared my introduction to Adirondack Color Wash.....an acid free water soluble dye for fabrics and fibers such as paper. Here's some ways it can be used....

Nancy Bruce was our guide......here she lightly sprayed water onto white polyester fabric in a plastic tub, then sprayed some 'lettuce' color wash. Several other colors were also added....the tub was set in the sun to dry. Having the fabric crinkled up allowed the dyes to puddle in some of the creases which provided lovely streaks of color. Afterwards, she heat set it with an iron.....duh.....I didn't get a photo of it afterwards.

One surprising aspect of this dye process........the colors look vibrant and bright when sprayed, but become much more subtle when dried. Nancy described it as muddy......but upon further discussion we think 'pale' is a better word.

Dry white fabric, positioned flat on a plastic covered table, was lightly sprayed with a variety of colors. Then Nancy used the tips of her fingers and gently flicked tiny drops of water onto the wet dyes.

The dye is easily soaked up by the fabric and the excess pools beneath it.....so as it sat we could see changes taking place in the way the dyes mingled.

The fabric is still wet at this point and we still see changes taking place....we suspect the white areas are where larger drops of water displaced the dye. We had no idea how the web looking areas developed. We moved the table out in the sun to dry....though Nancy said the process can be speeded up by using a hair dryer.

This will knock your socks off........look how the bright colors have been tamed after the fabric dried. My photo is slightly less colorful than the actual piece was....but not by much.

Here's a closer view of the color.....Carol Sloan is another member of our Fiber Junkies group....I'll be introducing her work next......she loves to draw and just 'happened' to have paper with her. Nancy doesn't waste a thing......so with her urging, Carol supplied some paper which Nancy used to clean up the table top drops. Apparently, scrap bookers are fans of this Color Wash product and use it to alter their papers.