Saturday 18 November 2017

Collage Fish - Happy News

I ALMOST threw the collage/water background into the garbage the other day. I was getting very frustrated with my inability to remove the purple markings. I had a little chat with a fellow in my guild who has become quite adept with dyeing fabric. He too, was surprised I had difficulty removing the marks which for him, like me, had always disappeared.


I came home and tried steaming the marks. It was worse. I folded the piece and put it on a shelf.

In the middle of the night I got to thinking about how this piece of fabric was so different from anything else I had used, dyed, crayoned or painted. The answer was milk protein.

I had this fabric with me when I attended a natural dyes workshop with Maggie Vanderweit. It ws necessary to soak the cotton fabric in a milk solution to add the animal prtoein needed to get a good dye result from leaves and flowers.

The next morning I put a small amount of hot water in my washer, added detergent and oxyclean and let it soak.  I had nothing to loose, as the piece in this shape was unusable. After a soak and then a short but thorough rinse cycle I took it out of the machine.

It worked.
The piece came clean.  The batting held up well too.

A Win Win day.
So I'm back to where I might just finish this.

No comments:

Post a Comment