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On and off Topic rambling, batik ? thrown in

Have a sick kiddo at home and didn't get much sleep last night, so if this is way to rambly, don't feel bad about deleting lol.

My duponi silk for the drapes in my bedroom is due to come today!!! We've been in this home for 6 1/2 yrs and i finally decided to order fabric and get this done. Hope my sm works for me (or at least one of them does lol) After i get them sewn, i think i am going to get the kiddos working on some of these

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I haven't done anything quilty or even sewing related for weeks. Barely even gone upstairs to look in my studio. So on the Quilty 2007 list....

1) organize sewing area - cleaning right now, as $$ magically appears (yeah right) work on new shelving, etc. 2) finish red/green Christmas quilt and lonestar/dragonfly quilt, start friend's quilt, start my red/black quilt, quilt DD1s quilt (top is done) 3) dunno ... think i will be fairly busy with one and two above for a while lol but might help out some at the new lqs
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still workin out details. oh... ?s for ya... the Webelos need to make a Den/Patrol flag late this month or early next. DS has drawn out the graphics. They want to make a batik-ish thing. it will be similar to the US flag with a field and stripes. There will be 8 or 9 stripes, (for the boys and the den leader(s)) and in the field there will be a flying eagle and a rising sun to represent their name and our district. They want Red, Blue, gold/yellow and possibly brown and orange for the colors they will add. I have a Tjanting
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that is fairly small.. and some wax and the knowledge of how to use it... the problem is, the kids want to paint in between the wax lines - not a huge deal, except the flag is required to be made of all natural materials. so........................Can i buy the all natural dyes and use as paints? do i have to crush berries and nuts and boil stuff down... if so how do i "fix" it...I have done some searching and gotten bits and parts... Mostly it seems the blues/indigos have to be vat dyed as an allover kinda thing. Some of the natural dye recipes I've found are not suited for 4th graders... Been a long time since i've taught this stuff lol
Reply to
Kellie J. Berger
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Kellie, have you checked at Dharma to see what they have? I think I remember indigo. Maybe they have some other natural dyes or paints.

Maureen

Reply to
Maureen Wozniak

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 08:33:30 -0600, "Kellie J. Berger" wrote: (snip)

Well....define natural?

It sounds like the definition you are going by is totally going to have you boiling bark and stuff. Some stuff does not need fixed, other materials vary as to what you need to fix color.

Indigo is going to be the easiest thing since you can get that prefermented, dried, and powdered. If you use about a teaspoon of thiox per gallon of water you get better color IMHO. The thiox takes a lot of the free oxgen out of the water so you get more color in the fabric and less in the water. If you add iron water to indigo you get a killer black.

Red sandal (red sandalwood, red saunders wood) will give you a good rosey red, use of iron in the dyepot will give the best color.

Both of these are easily found and purchased. Both are pretty much safe for use so long as you don't mind blue fingered boys. (G)

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of the things listed here work well on wool and silk, at leastthe few I have used. I have no idea if they would work on cotton. The big problem is most of these need to be used hot, which means batik is right out the window. There is stuff you can use for hot dye process batiking, but it probably does not fit the natural requirement and is a pain in the behind to use besides.

There is a shibori process that involves sewing the sheaths from young bamboo over gathers of fabric to prevent color penetration in a dye bath. There is another that involves sandwiching fabric between wads of sewn on cotton to achieve a similar effect. Perhaps you could experiment a bit along these lines? You probably aren't going to find the bamboo locally, but perhaps there is a bark or other plant that you might try? Cotton balls and first aid cotton work just fine for the other technique. You could experiment with batting scraps and shapes as well.

So far as painting you are right out of luck. The only all natural paints I can think of that are guaranteed not to wash out are high end artist's oils, which are basicly ground rock in some variety of vegetable oil. Some of those are rather toxic. The only other option I can think of would be to look up traditional yuzen style japanese dying and trying to discover what traditionally was used to make the dyes, and then resolve yourself to steaming. It may be possible to steam set dyes made of native plants, but I have not made the experiment. Your weblos may need to learn applique, embroidery (quill embroidery? the syle of ribbon embroidery that has replaced quill embroidery with some?), or weaving.

NightMist

Reply to
NightMist

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