Something About Nothing

Cove Fort, Utah

What inspires you to decorate your home?  One Kings Lane  just released this wonderful video (at the bottom of my post) that has completely inspired me to re-look at my home to see how I can update it. What I love about the short clip is how they don't remodel the entire room, just a few pieces here and there to give the room an entirely new feel!  One Kings Lane  has new sales pop up all throughout the week and each sale lasts 72 hours, so when you see an item, don't wait! They offer so many unique styles from fantastic brand names at great prices...head over and check them out today:  One Kings Lane . And watch their new quick video here:

I went to the fabric store and purchased some scarf fabric.  I wanted to paint the scarves so I didn't pay attention to fiber content.  Well, like any good woman, I have now changed my mind and I don't remember what kind of fabric they are.  Normally at this point I would dump the fabric in a dye bath and soda ash and hope for the best.  But thanks to some recent knowledge , I know better.  I cut the selvedges off the two fabrics, added some dye and soda ash and ended with this: Obviously one of the fabrics won't work with my MX fiber reactive dyes. It's a good thing I didn't waste a lot of dye on it! The other fabric is going to dye beautifully! I'm looking forward to trying some new dye techniques on the fabric. One of these methods I just learned in Jane Dunnewold's "The Art of Cloth Dyeing"  class on Craftsy.      I bought the class and started watching it a few months ago and then got busy.  I finally made s...

Happy Blogiversary to ME! Five years ago today I entered the blogging world. It has been a fun learning experience and I've made a lot of great friends along the way. I think it's time to CELEBRATE! And what better way to celebrate than with PRESENTS! I have ice-dyed FIVE fat quarters. . .   . . . which I am giving away to FIVE Lucky readers! If you would like a chance at winning one of these lovely fabrics, please leave a comment (with your email address!) telling me about your favorite dyeing method, even if you haven't done it yet, before midnight PST, Monday, September 30th. It's that easy! I will draw FIVE winners on Tuesday, October 1st and post the winners on the blog. International entries are welcome!

I really had a great time in Carol's class however by the time Thursday afternoon hit I was overwhelmed with all the new information I was learning.  I had to step back and just watch for a little while. There were so many beautiful colors and patterns all around! I just had to sit and soak it all in! That afternoon we also learned how to discharge and over-dye a t-shirt using a shibori pole.  And how to make this cool design using thiox immersion discharging. I pulled myself together after a good nights rest and did a little more work on the last day.  One of my favorite things I managed was this piece.  I had discharged it earlier in the week with thiox paste but the thiox wasn't strong enough.  Notice the lighter round shapes in the back ground? So I pulled it out, threw some of the same washers on top along with some other circle shapes and sprayed it with DeColourant mist. I think it looks like a ...

One of my favorite projects from Carol Soderlund 's class was printing with Thiox in print paste. I created a thermofax screen from a photo of a coneflower and used it in my printing. I really like the texture. It reminds me of a commercial batik. The fabric on the left is the printed/discharged piece, and the fabric on the right is the original ice dyed fabric which I tore this piece off of. I want to discharge the rest of the fabric!  This piece was a fabric which I dyed by spreading the dye across with a big paint brush.  I didn't like it much but I am liking it even more with the discharged letters.  I think I will throw some tangerine dye on top next.  This is a piece I didn't like which I over-dyed with several blacks.  The color came out more purple than black.  I then used a circle thermofax screen and some 2 day old Thiox paste to put in a little texture.  The Thiox wasn't strong enough to take out all of the c...

See the organic pattern on the piece below?   It looks like the outside of a cantaloupe doesn't it? That is the pattern you can get using potato dextrine as a resist! We started with black commercial fabric, as well as pfd and hand dyed fabrics. I applied my potato dextrine through some stencils. The fabric at the top is a black commercial fabric and the one on the bottom is an overdyed commercial fabric.  Polly is making designs into the potato dextrin.  It has to dry completely before the discharge or dye can be applied over the top. In our case, we had to run and get all the tables into the barn so that they didn't get rained on! The next day we applied the discharge paste and got some really cool results. My black piece got a little over worked. In other words, I went over the potato dextrin too much in a few places, not allowing it to form the nice big pattern it is known for. The over dyed commercial fabric ...