All Dyed Up!

Felted blouse in the dye pot.

I was really excited to dye my blouse, I was actually beginning not to like it much and was sceptical it was because it was lacking in color.  It just felt blah.  So into the dye pot it went and now I love it again:)  I really am a sucker for color.
I think it turned out magnificent!

Shoulder/Sleeve Detail, Love!

I was also really excited that I was able to mix a color and match it to the color palette I was looking at, recognize this beautiful periwinkle color from a certain photo below?

And since I can never just dye one thing, I did a little more mixing of colors and threw a few more things in dye pots:)
This first one is a piece of scrap cotton gauze with a few pieces of scrap silk felted into it.  That's one piece of fabric with 3 different fibers in it, which means when I throw it in the dye pot, you get 3 different colors, I love that!

felted cotton and silk yardage fabric

And this was the result.  The cotton stayed white since I was using acid dyes, so only the silk and wool reacted and took the dye, a very cool result.

full piece of fabric right out of the dye pot

the white sections are the cotton gauze, the maroon cranberry color is the wool, and the brown is the silk

Love the contrast in colors and textures!

If I had used natural dyes all of the fibers would have taken up the dye and the resulting colors would have all been different.  Amazing!


I also tried a little Shibori.  I did the Arashi pole wrapping method (which has become one of my favorite Shibori techniques) with a large piece of silk chiffon, ooooohhhh la la.

There is something so magical about using Shibori techniques with dyeing.  You have a general idea of what will come out, but you just never know till you unwrap it.  Needless to say it is always a beautiful result.

Here is the finished result draped on the dress form.  Looks like this piece will be turning into a lovely skirt.
Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

Blouse Continued + Shibori and Color Inspiration

She has a waist!
Now that I have the side seams and front mostly felted on my first blouse, its coming together quite nicely!
So far the fit seems good at the waist and front, so now I have to figure out the back and how to make that come together for a nice fit all the way around the waist.

Below is an upside down shot of the back now.  I love the way it looks as is, but am not really sure how it will look once its felted.  I kind of like how the silk looks all bunched and gathered but dont think I can keep that aesthetic with the felting.  Guess we'll see!

Shibori and Color Inspiration:
Yep it's time to start thinking COLOR, my favorite part!  I was doing an image search for Shibori the other day looking for some inspiration and found these beauties.

Shibori Borealis- by Margo

I found this lovely piece on the blog Her Majesty Margo who does some really amazing surface design with felt and fabric!
I love how the colors all blend and flow into each other, very reminiscent of water colors.  I am also really attracted to those shades of green lately, so beautiful!

Folded Currents - by Holly Brackmann

This piece really caught my eye, I wasn't even certain it was fabric.  I found this amazing piece from Holly Brackmann's website, make sure to check out the detail shot, incredible!

Although both pieces seem quite different, they both use similar colors to the color palettes I have been looking at lately for my practicum project.  I found these babies off of pintrest and just cant stop starring at them!

Love these for bursts of bright accents!

And I love these for neutrals!

It's almost time for me to throw the blouse in the dye pot...wonder which of these colors it will come out looking like...?
Guess you'll just have to stay tuned to find out:)

Making Garments

*Haven't been here for awhile, no excuses, no apologies, just getting back on the train*

Making Garments - that is what my practicum is all about.

My goal is to make beautiful feminine garments using silk, cotton, and wool.  Using the wool fibers and the laminate felting process to join fabrics and seams, I will be sewing very little of the garments together, and using up all of the fabric without any left over scraps.

After working on some swatches last week, tonight was my first go at making a blouse using these techniques and restrictions.  And I must say I am extremely happy with the results!  The blouse is by no means finished, I have only fitted and felted the shoulders and sleeves, but I will be finishing the design of the blouse tomorrow morning.

Here are some photos of the process and what I've got so far...

This is the rectangle of fabric I started with and cut a diamond shape out of the center to create the front and back neck-line.

This is the beginning of the sleeve.

I first needle felt the wool fibers into the layers of silk I want to join.  This is to help get the felting started, and to lessen the amount of time I need to wet felt the garment.

This is what it looked like after being needle felted, but before being wet felted.

Detail of the sleeve before wet felting.

Sleeve Detail

 

Ready for wet felting!

Here is the result after wet felting, I am so excited it turned out exactly as I have envisioned it in my head.  A great feeling of accomplishment!

Here it is all wet felted! 

Sleeve detail

Sleeve detail

Back

 Now my head is swimming with ideas of how to finish the blouse!  Is the closure on the side, or the front? A nice invisible zipper?  Does one side come over and cross in the front with a nice hook and eye or button?  How do I close up the side seams?  Keep them symmetrical, or go crazy?  How will I ever decide!

How would you finish this garment, how do you see it in its final design?  I would love to hear what you think in the comments below:)

Time to get it out there

Well it has taken much longer than intended to get photos of our First Year final show up on this here blog.
But alas, here I am with time on my hands, in LA while Christian is at work waiting to leave for Costa Rica to get married.
So without further ado here they are.
Enjoy!

A shot of my forest canopy/tent/fort in the daylight, it is even more magical at night!

This one has a close up of the tiny led votives I added some of my green dyed fabric to for a look of glowing grass.

A peak inside.

Kathryn Bradshaw with her amazingly beautiful books.

Kathryn Bradshaw's impeccably binded book, she's got talent comin' out the wazoo!

William Ruek's Barn, with real live ducks.

Heather Bromer's modified teddy bears.

Killeen Hansen's Papercut Slide Narrative set-up.

Some of Killeen's slides projected onto the wall.

Karl Ramentol's felt bike seats and lamp.

Sheri Earnhart's set design.

Jody Dunphy's seeded and growing paper.

Sheri inside my forest canopy, probably my favorite shot of the night:)

Me and Christian enjoying a break from the show inside the forest canopy with our roommates.

Looking up inside the forest canopy!

And finally a shot of the inside of the forest canopy/tent/fort.

So if you made it through all those photos, I also made a video (my first one ever!) of the dyeing process for this project.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

Till next time!
Hope you are all enjoying your summer:)

Moving along

Here are some photo updates of where I am in my process of my final project.  I still have a ways to go, but I'm moving along:)

 

This is the fabric soaking in a soda ash solution, which is the chemical that helps the color absorb into the fabrics.  

This is my set up, lots of dye, some sponges, spray bottles, and extra towels and rags.  I must say I was lucky to score a good amount of wall space that I could pin up the fabric and plastic to.

Ready to dye!  That is a 12ft x 9ft plastic drop cloth on the wall behind the fabric, to give you an idea of how big the piece of fabric is.  They are about 10ft long and 3ft wide at the top and 9ft wide at the bottom.

 And this is what it looks like after its been dyed.  It doesn't look nearly as dark or saturated when its rinsed and dried, but it still looks just as vibrant!

After the dye soaked fabric sat overnight with an electric blanket on it, it was ready to rinse.  This is the Fibers studio at OCAC where they have ample sink space, it really did take 3 sinks for me to rinse these babies!

And this is the final product!  Don't forget, there are 3 other pieces with the same color sequence that were done as well, its only possible to take a photo of one at a time:)  They have all been sewn together to create a very large skirt like structure.

I have also been documenting my entire process with video, but will have to learn a bit more about video editing until I debut it here.  But I should be done with it soon!

Right now I am working on making pillows to go inside my super stellar fabric fort/canopy, and am having a lot of fun playing with different quilting techniques to make them.  It's a great way to be able to play with all these different techniques I have been dying to try all year.
Photos of the pillows are coming soon!

A Brown Victory!

Victory!  I have created a successful brown, finally.  I did actually end up using pre-mixed browns to get it right.  But I am not giving up on mixing my own brown.  I will try again in the future, but in the interest of time for my project I will be sticking with this method.

they look a bit red on the computer but I promise they are quite beautiful browns in person:)

Also here are some swatches of the color layout for the entire piece of fabric that will be making the canopy.  The one in the center is what it will look like.

Tomorrow I have to start cutting the fabric, lots and lots of fabric:)

Fabric Forts and Canopy's

Beautiful Fabric Fort by Justina Blakeney, check out Design Sponge for the super easy "How To"

I love Fabric Forts!  Who hasn't tried to build one at some point in their life?

The end of my first year of grad school is quickly approaching.  Late nights combine with early mornings, group meals, and lots of stress.  The constant hum of machinery, sewing, hammering, cutting, chatter and music, the studio is bustling with energy with our end of the year show May 6th-8th.

Everyone is busy working on their projects for the show.  This semester I decided to do something I have never done before...create an installation, on purpose:)  I am building a Fabric Canopy/Fort!

It's going to be structured like a typical bed canopy, with the feel of a child like fort.  I am really excited about this project and have been hard at work.

The photo above is one of my inspiration photos.  I love the eclectic look and the cozy feel of it, although what I have in mind will be quite different.  Mine will be made to resemble a fairy-tale forest, one of my favorite places!  I will be dying the fabric in colors to simulate my fairy-tale forest, a gorgeous blue at the top to resemble the sky cascading into rich greens of foliage, and finally transitioning into a deep earth brown.  The interior will be decorated with lots of pillows, some over sized leaf shapes, regular squares with floral prints, and some soft furry ones to create a comfortable and cozy feel.  I am also going to add crocheted vines and flowers cascading from the top center down to the floor. 

Soooooo...Time to get to work!  So far I have been doing lots of dye tests to figure out which fabric I want to use, how to get the colors I want, and what techniques to use.  So far some have been successful and others...not so much.

In the photo above the 2 on the left were tests in technique and color.  The blues and greens I love but the brown came out waaaay too red.  So that led me to do some smaller tests to see if I could get a better brown.

Not so much here either:(  After a bit of internet research I learned that brown is apparently a very hard color to mix, and that even the browns that are sold premixed don't always look so great.  But luckily there were a few good tips about how to get a good brown that I will hopefully be able to work on tomorrow. 

To try and distract me from getting too discouraged about my unsuccessful dying experiments, I decided to work on the measurements for the canopy and made a small model out of scrap fabric and wire.  I only cut out 2 of the 4 fabric panels for the model, but it was good enough for me to see the drape and get a good idea of how it will look.  I am happy to see that my pattern and measurements worked out nicely.  Now all I have to do is make the actual size pattern and start cutting the fabric pieces (exciting).  My model is made at about 1/3 the size.  The finished canopy will be about 8ft wide at the floor and 7ft off the ground.

This is the view from the inside, the clothespins are merely acting as weights:)

This is the view from the back/outside

How do you feel about fabric forts?  Do you have a memory of a favorite fabric fort that you built as a kid?  Feel free to share in the comments below:)  

Till next time, wish me luck with the brown dye!