Kick the Bucket and Dye!

I had so much fun doing this! Who needs commercial fabric?? A gigantic gold rotary blade (as opposed to a gold star) goes to Della for bringing this great idea to the RBOG fiber laboratory! Bravo!

Dyeing at Della's

This was a really successful experiment! Makes me want to do more! Maybe I should just buy white fabric from now on and see what happens!

One Two Bucket Dyeing

The RBogs had a One Bucket Dyeing adventure using the process explained at http://threecreativestudios.com/free.htm. I rinsed and ironed the fabrics today. What a fun day we had.

Hot Potatoes!

Maybe we shouldn't throw out the Hungry Man just yet. I finally sprayed bleach on the black fabric that I took home that was covered with mashed potato resist. I think the discharged fabric turned out quite nicely. Maybe the key is to let the mashed potatoes dry REALLY well on the fabric before dyeing or discharging? I'm not suggesting waiting as long as the two months I waited but...we, RBOG art lab scientists, aren't known for our patience. :)

First Embellisher Experiment

RBOG's, we must have an embellisher day! I tried it today--it's really fun and spontaneous! The top of the photo is my project, "Seashell" and the bottom of the photo is the inspiration photo. I used canvas and tear away stabilizer for the foundation, then fabric for the background with organza on top of it. I cut out a shell, felted it on to the background, then did some thread painting. After that I used some Inktense pencils and fabric pens for definition, then did some quilting and put an edge on the piece! Fini!

Mashed Potato Resist

"It was a mash, it was a monster mash." Actually, it was an RBOG day gone haywire. We thought we would try some mashed potato resist. I think Reva did a fine job cooking the Hungry Man potatoes, but the dye results were less than successful. I think the dye mix was the culprit. Not enough thickener and not enough saturation. Arghhh. Fortunately, we had bean soup for lunch followed by flan. Yum. Good company too. So, we made ugly fabric. Always an opportunity for over-dying.

"Bend Don't Break" (10"x16")

I thought I'd post my Fast Friday challenge piece here. The fabric was made at an RBOG discharge day. Yay - another piece emerges from the stash. The leaves are the kind that you purchase from the scrapbooking section of the craft store. The challenge was to incorporate transparency and either a high horizon or a low horizon. This is the first challenge piece I've done since (gasp) February.