This and that.........

 Today I worked on another baby quilt for charity. The fabric was donated and was fun to put together, it needed some quilting in the center of the blocks so I quilted a star in each one. Very fun. Think I've done enough charity baby quilts for a bit........need to do some sewing for myself soon.

 Recently I silkscreened discharge paste onto a handwoven chenille scarf. I hadn't done this in a while, I did think to check my discharge paste to make sure it was still good unlike last time when it had lost it's umpf. The paste almost worked too good as it bled through to the wrong side so the backside of the scarf has ghost images of the gingko leaves. This has never happened before......but I'm wondering if maybe it was the different brand of chenille that was the culprit. The scarf is fine but I'm not happy with that happening.

Here it is finished. It's amazing how different brands of chenille will discharge completely different - usually I get a really yellow gold but this chenille discharged to a goldy/lavender.........it's very pretty......just different. This scarf is up for sale in my etsy shop. One of the pictures in the listing does show the ghost imaging on the backside if anyone is interested.

More adminstrivia....and a reward

More administrivia today.....all I want to do is weave, spin, sew or knit.....but never ending administrivia. I spent time taking pictures of scarves for sale, above is one of the rayon chenille scarves that I silkscreened discharge paste on in the gingko design. Pictures never do these justice. And then after taking numerous pictures, editing them and saving them I got to run the vacuum - red letter day! So, I decided a reward was due, after I dropped off orders at the post office I drove to town (totally out of the way by at least 10 miles each way) and picked us up take-out from Abu's Deli & Oasis.....the entire house smells like lebanese food.....going to be hard waiting for Sam to get home.....

Gingkos, leaves, dragonflies, oh my!

Wednesday I decided to silkscreen discharge paste onto the latest chenille scarves, then yesterday, while snowed in, I hit them with the steam iron to pull the dye out, got them washed and this is what they look like. Unfortunately from this picture you can't get the feel of the rayon chenille, you also can't see the red scarves very well - they are stunning but more subtle, red has been my most popular selling color for this technique with black a close second (the ones on the right aren't black, they're a very dark carbon grey).

The past two days I also weighed, tagged and bagged up at least 40 pounds of Ashland Bay roving for my etsy shop. Kind of a boring job but ok when watching a movie or dvr'd shows. Got a pair of sox finished up and ready to mail to Michigan too.

So, yesterday we had a snowstorm that wasn't forecast - there was a forecast for light snow, nothing much at our elevation but lots in the mountains. Well, we woke up to 6" and ended up with 8" of heavy snow.....power blips all day long, loss of internet for hours and I wasn't going anywhere as I had planned. In town they had a dusting, those of us just a bit west and north  of the city had 6-12". Sam drove up and down the driveway (1/3 mile) in his 4wd truck last night with hopes that I could get out today. Bailey and I walked it this morning and the worst hill and curves are looking pretty icy but I'll give it a try in a couple hours and keep my fingers crossed that I don't slide off down the ravine. I'm not sure but I'm thinking once I hit the road it will be fine.

Goings on in the studio

On Monday I wove a couple red chenille scarves. Yesterday I decided to silkscreen discharge paste on them to remove color. One scarf I used the silkscreen above which I bought from Marcy Tilton. The other scarf I used ginkgo silkscreens that I had burned myself. First step is to apply the gloppy discharge paste (bought from Dharma Trading) with a sponge brush. Then I let it dry.

Next step is to iron it and like magic the color disappears and ginkgos appear! I did do a sample first to see what color the red would discharge to - this golden color was perfect. In the past I had a purple that discharged to a very ugly orange, luckily I sampled that before doing the entire scarf.

 And here's the scarf today after washing and drying. When I wash rayon chenille I let it soak in soapy water, then rinse, then let it soak in water with some fabric softener. I hang it over a shower rod covered with a towel to dry, then when almost dry or completely dry I throw it in the dryer on low heat or fluff and it comes out drapey and soft as butter.....yum, butter.....

Yesterday afternoon I put this chenille warp on the loom. It's a soft lavendar and seafoam in the warp using a fibonacci striping sequence. Partway through the first scarf I wondered what would happen if halfway through I switched from the lavendar weft to the seafoam weft. It's really not as pronounced as it appears in the photo, it's very subtle. These scarves are hanging to dry right now, will really be able to see how successful this experiment was tomorrow morning. I thinking I'm going to like it so I've already pulled out some other colors to do more - very subtle color changes in the same value looks to work.

And here are those recent scarves that came off the loom, the faux ikat bamboo scarves. I'm not a very good photographer so I can't diagnose why sometimes when taking pictures of handwovens a weird moire look shows up - the scarves don't really look like that.

Discharging black chenille scarves

This is an example of using discharge paste which takes the dye out of fibers/fabrics. It's much safer to use than bleach and has very little fumes. This is a picture of one of my handmade silkscreens made using my Gocco machine which will burn small silkscreens. The pink around the edge is duct tape (quack, quack) to protect the cardboard frame from moisture. The discharge paste itself is the consistency of a thick pudding which is easy to work with - I applied it with the foam brush.

After the discharge paste is totally dry I press it with an iron (steam setting) and it magically pulls the dye out of the handwoven chenille scarf. The color that comes out depends on how a fiber was dyed - blacks can be anywhere from golds, to rusts, to deep reds. It's a surprise each time I use this process which is why I always sample before actually discharging a scarf.

These are pictures of sections of each of the scarves. The one on the left is the color the black discharges to. The one on the right I added Jacquard textile paints to the discharge paste so as it discharged the color would be absorbed into the fiber.

So, adding this to the other black chenille scarves posted earlier I now have 5 scarves to twist fringe on........will eventually get to it...........