Page 98 - The Digital Cloth Issue 6

The Little Kingfishers
Next the dye powder is sprinkled on the
ice, covered with a plastic bag, and left to
melt overnight or for several hours. The
fabric is rinsed, washed in Synthrapol,
dried and is ready to use. How much dye
do you add? I recommend about a ¼ tsp
per color, with a maximum of 4 colors per
a ½ meter or ½ yard of fabric. The colors
I added below are from Dharma Trading
here in the US, in the colors of Peach,
Palomino gold, and Marigold.
(image - top left)
Over many years I noticed that cotton
fabrics generally had better color coverage
than some pieces of silk. I suspected that it
was because of how fast silk binds to the dye
molecules, so that the color was captured
quickly, and did not then migrate to fill in the
entire piece of fabric. At first, I thought that
was a problem! To save the fabric, I decided
to simply over dye it with a dye solution. The
piece on the left is silk, and the same colors of
dyes over cotton is on the right.
To over dye fabric, make the dye solutions, the
formula is given above. When the urea is
dissolved, and the water temperature is cooled
a bit, mix in two tablespoons of the dye
powder. I put this into a bottle, seal and shake
until I don’t see any remaining powder
floating on the surface. This concentrated dye
solution will give you a darker shade but can
be diluted further if desired.
Put your fabric back into the soda ash solution
for a few minutes to soak, and then squeeze
out excess soda ash solution and place the
fabric into a plastic container. Pour over as
much of the dye solution as desired, and you
can lightly squeeze to move the dye through.
Leave the dye on the fabric for several hours
or overnight, then rinse and wash out excess
dye with warm water with Synthrapol until
the water runs clear. I usually hang my dyed
fabric to dry and then iron, but you can use
a commercial fabric dryer. I do not use my
washing machine to wash fabric, to avoid
having any dye stain the next load, and it may
damage front loaders.
Color choice can vary for your over dyed
fabric! Pictured below is ice dyed and
overdyed silk. You can see I have tried
purples, turquoise, golds and red orange.
Each piece is unique and beautiful, and it is
sometimes a surprise what comes out.
Enjoy your lovely new fabric.
Sandra
Autumn Colours - By Sandy Juracich
- By Gilian Gordon
Gillian made this little project
in an online class with
Caroline Sharkey in
collaboration with Lesley
Mays Patchwork and Craft
in Mildura VIC. This was a
complimentary extra project
included in the main online
workshop called Kingfisher
Dreaming that Gillian also
completed.
For more information on this
and other info please contact
Lesley Mays Patchwork and
Craft
Readers
Art
I love trees in their blazing Autumn colours. “Autumn
Colours” is a quilt I started making in October 2018 at
a Caroline Sharkey workshop. This workshop was at the
Pacific International Quilt Festival held at the Santa Clara
Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Caroline provides
the best and most interesting workshops. She allowed me
to create this lovely quilt by showing me her techniques for
making original fabric backgrounds, lacy leaves, and free
motion machine sewing/quilting. I also learned how to do
bobbin work for embellishment. Thanks to Caroline, I now
have some knowledge to create more exciting art quilts.
I took a class from Caroline four years ago and loved it.
When I learned she was returning to PIQF this past
October, I immediately signed up for both of her
workshops. The second quilt I made, will be finished soon.
It is my own design that I sketched out and
Caroline showed me how to make it come alive.