New Wardrobe Addition

I confess I used to be a clothes horse a long time ago in another life. This year I kinda set the challenge for myself to go an entire year without purchasing anything to wear on my body. I say "kinda" because I wanted to leave open the possibility that I could purchase an item if it was something I absolutely had to have. Haven't seen anything like that this year, but I confess I haven't set foot in a woman's clothing store in 2011. I made it a little past 4 months with no purchases, until this past week when I picked up the neatest white jeans jacket at Walmart for $25. I don't shop at Walmart much. I don't care for stores that are the size of a warehouse and I worry about all those people who were paid next to nothing for the goods they produced that we so cheaply purchase and that we so cavalierly throw out. I know this is a contradiction when I shop for classroom dyeing supplies (cups, spoons, plates, etc) at Dollarama!!! However, this jacket fit perfectly, was nicely constructed, and I had visions of turning it into a piece of wearable art with dyes and soy wax batik. After bringing the jacket home, I realized I also had a casual black jacket hanging around my closet that I had bought for $8.00 on a sales rack at Winners about 8 years ago. Wouldn't it be fun to discharge it with bleach? Yipee, an evening of creating a few new wardrobe items on only $25! What better way to distract myself from the studio and from preparing for the next 3 days of teaching. Well that was last Thursday, and as it turns out the once white jacket didn't turn out so great. I think I can still salvage it but it will likely be something different from what I envisioned. I am, however, VERY happy with the discharged jacket. It seems these days that most black cottons (most of which are produced in China) discharge to an orange colour, but I was delighted as I watched this one turn to a lovely taupe colour. I don't know if this information will help, but this jacket was manufactured in Bangladesh, so maybe that accounts for the nice colour it discharged to. I folded the jacket down the middle, then fan folded each side, then bound it with plastic twine. Tossed it into a solution of 50% bleach and 50% water. It only took about 5-10 minutes before the bleach had done its work. After a rinse, a soak in Anti Chlor, and a wash, I have a new jacket for only the cost of a bottle of bleach. What do you think?

Rear View:

Rear detail view:

Front view:

Front detail view:

Dye Happy 6 Discharge

Today was the last day of my 6-part Dye Happy class, and the topic was Discharge, or as some students called it, "undyeing fabric". As is often the case with classes that extend over a 6-month period, life happens and students disappear. But here you can see the die/dye-hards, who came to virtually every class, including the last one.

Left to right: Heather, Tatiana, me, Barb, Sylvia, Susan, Helen, Kirsten, Sandra, David

Fortunately it was a warm (by Ottawa standards) sunny day, and we were able to put the pails of bleach solution and anti-chlor solution out the back door of the community centre to keep the fumes out of the classroom. Speaking of anti-chlor, please please please use a bleach-neutralizing agent to neutralize any bleach that might remain in the fabric in order to avoid damage to the fabric over time. Also, it is a myth that vinegar neutralizes bleach; in fact the mixing of vinegar with bleach can result in an even more noxious chemical than bleach itself.

Some really cool pieces resulted, like Susan's T-shirt (which started out as a plain black T-shirt) and was fan-folded, twisted and bound.

Note, the sky was just about as blue today in Ottawa as in the California desert (see my March 17 post titled "Inspiration from California".

Here are some other knock-out pieces!

These two are just dyeing too happily!!

Students also brought some of their finished dye-painted pieces from our last class.
Tatiana's tulips:

Susan's spiral design, already quilted and finished.

Heather's tree and tulips, with an interesting irregular shape, also finished and ready for the Ottawa Valley Quilt show.

David's boat, trimmed to an oval, and ready to be placed into a larger piece.

Although developing this class was a lot of work, it was definitely worth it, and I am going to miss the class and this group. If this blog has been heavily weighted toward the subject of dyeing, that is because I've spent the last 9 months developing and teaching the class. Now I hope to turn to making some art quilts in between my teaching engagements and get to work on developing my new "Threads: Uncommon & Unforgettable" class, which will be offered at the Haliburton School of the Arts during the first week of August. The Art Quilt will be offered there the last week of July.