The first thing I did for this chapter was to raid the fabric boxes I have access to at home and at school to find swatches of black/white fabrics of different materials and patterns. The left hand side of the image below shows some of the collection. Unfortunately the picture does not do justice to the different weaves and textures on some of the swatches- particularly the black ones. The swatches when side by side really highlight the fact that there are many different types of black and white that can be found.
Once I had collected these swatches I decided to mix up two different black dyes and try to colour my own fabrics with them. One of the dyes was a Dylon 'fast' fabric dye in a shade called 'Velvet black'. The other was a non-fast dye created using Brusho 'black' powders. When wet both had identical appearances but this changed when dry and it was obvious that the Dylon had the darker and richer colour of the two. I experimented with different swatches of white fabric and timings. As expected, plain cotton dyed to a darker shade than fabrics of a mixed/synthetic blend of fibres and that the longer a fabric was left in the dye the richer the result. I also had a play with dip dye to see the tonal effects it could deliver. The best results for this came from the Brusho and it was interesting to note that as the colour spread it gave out paler bluish tones. The Dylon dye in contrast did not spread as significantly but when it did the tones were more brown. I played on these effects by using a paintbrush to dab the dyes into patterns on the fabric. The results, bottom right in the image, were very similar to the leopard and giraffe patterns from my research.
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| 2/6/1: Collecting fabrics and experimenting with dyes |
As I previously did with the papers I created, I used monoprinting and some other print techniques to embellish my own fabrics. The some of the results are in the image below (note I saved the best for my samples for later on!):
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| 2/6/2: Monoprinting onto fabric experiments |
As with my mono-printed fabrics I saved the best tie-dye and shibori samples for other chapters later on. Below are some swatches from the rest. I experimented with different ways of folding/scrunching the fabric along with different ways of securing such as with elastic bands, pegs and stitching. I also tried trapping coins into some of the samples which resulted in some great 3D effects but unsure how practical these particular samples will be for patchworking. Other textured effects came from my samples that were Shibori around old plastic pipes. These gave some really nice scaly effects.
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| 2/6/3: Tie dye and Shibori experiments |
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