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!