100 Days of Reworked Cloth 2018

My 100 days project for 2018 is more than halfway through, but I'm lagging behind a fair bit due to work commitments and holidays in Rarotonga.  However, I'm not feeling too bad about it because I've already had positive effects from my participation, and I anticipate more before the project is through.

One of the positives is that I've really resparked my dyeing practice.  I thought it would be difficult in this house we've moved into, but with a little bit of work and a fair few plastic drop sheets, I've found ways to make it work.

Dyed fabrics drying in my back deck dye 'studio'

Another of the positives is finding ways to sell my work.  I had some enquiries, so began a process of photographing pieces of hand dyed cloth and posting them in a shop section on my Facebook page.  It was a pretty easy thing to do that I'd been putting off because I thought it would be more difficult.  Turns out it's easy, and I'll be gradually adding more as the days go by.

(You can see what is listed here https://www.facebook.com/pg/opuaarts/shop/)

The best positive is the notes I'm taking.  I have always taken notes on my dyeing, but not nearly as extensively as I should have, but I'm being very careful with this project and keeping good samples of the fabrics before I've changed them.  I can already see how useful this will be.

One of my favourite experiementations of my 100 days of reworked cloth so far is the overdyeing that I've done.

I began with the olive green fabric on the above left and ripped it into twelve pieces.  I then overdyed each piece with a full strength mixture of my most usual dye colours.  On the left, from top to bottom, is overdyeing with black, turquoise, mid blue and navy.

This one is golden yellow, lemon yellow, red and fuchsia.

And this last section is purple, bright green, grass green and sea green.

This lot inspired me to do further sets, using base colours of blue, yellow and red.

Above is the blue, with black, turquoise, mid blue and navy.  And below is the yellow and red with the same set of overdye colours.  It's so interesting to see how the different base colours effect the 'topcoat'.

I love how the two layers make the dyes so much richer and more interesting.

This won't just be useful for when I'm doing a complete overdye, but also if I want to print patterns with a second or third colour.

I also think I need to do some colour wheels and dilution scales, which is departing a little from reworked cloth, but it's my project, so I guess I can do what I like!

100 Days Project 2018 - Reworked Cloth

Back in May I wrote about my upcoming 100 Days Project.  Well, it's started, and today is day 20.  My project is all about experimenting with adding layers of surface design over the top of my already hand-dyed fabric.  You can read more about how I came up with that project back on the original blog post.

I asked for suggestions for names and hashtags and Linda suggested #100daysoflayers.  I was going to use that (thanks Linda!) but it's already been used on Instagram for a few other things - beautiful things actually, you should go and search that hashtag when you've got a minute.  In the end I spent some quality time with my thesaurus and came up with #100daysofreworkedcloth.  Still a bit clunky, but at least it's all mine - so far.

Day One Fabric, before and after.

Twenty days means I'm one fifth of the way through, but I feel like I'm just getting started.  I've generated 20 new fabrics, but I've also generated many more ideas and questions and leads to follow.

For example, should I try every technique in high flow acrylic inks AND dye to compare the results?  Should I do one technique in multiple colour ways?  There's so many techniques available to me, should I simplify by just sticking to dye and not paint?  What if I used a foam roller rather than a hard brayer to spread the dye paste onto that leaf?

I'm not sure of any of the answers to those questions.  So I'm just continuing, with not much planning at this point, but having a lot of fun.

One thing I'm glad I did, is set up a good note taking process before I began.  I take a photograph of the fabric before I begin and snip a swatch to put in my book.  I make and create, and then once the fabric is finished, I photograph it again and snip another swatch.  In my journal I make extensive notes about what I did, the colours I used etc.

The process falls down sometimes when I forget to take a photo before I start, but I'm getting better at  working ahead a bit and photographing things in batches when the light is good.  At the end of the project I'll have a book full of 100 surface design samples, so I'll have something very concrete and usuable for years to come.

Day 10 Fabric, before and after.

Because I'm only doing one or two pieces a day I can spend some time considering my results more than I would if I had spent a whole day dyeing fifty pieces of fabric.  It's this musing that is leading to all the questions I talked about earlier.  Sometimes the project feels like it could grow exponentially (and out of control!)

I'll check back in when I have a few more favourite fabrics to share, but for now here's day 14 before and after, which I think is my most dramatic change, and day 4, which I think is my weirdest...