ripple closeup

ripple closeup
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

This is what I wanted to show you -- the intricate little white ripples created by putting the wrap over the scrunched silk. Kewl.

white water

white water
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

A nice splashy thing. Pale blue and sky blue together in low water immersion.

acid trip

acid trip
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Even using the tripod and the timed shutter, these pictures STILL got blurry. ARG.

However, this dye experiment turned out waaaay cool. I used thickened and activated green, dark blue, and purple dyes and squirted them right on a randomly scrunched veil on a pole. The colors are ultra insane. I love it!

me to dye: you are FIRED!

Many of the dyes in my Procion MX collection are things that sounded interesting, so I bought a small quantity just to try them out. Some of these things have been great successes. Others... not so much.

Dharma's "Bronze", for example. When I use it on silk, what I get is sickly green! To me bronze is a brownish color that's heading towards copper but doesn't go that far. But no dice on silk.

I'm also consistently depressed by my results with Teal. On silk it comes out dull, lackluster, without the blue spark I want to see underlying the gray-green tones.

Emerald Green has the opposite problem. There's so much turquoise in this dye that I always get blue spots when I use it. Teal and Emerald, go off in the corner and try to work out your problems, m'kay?

And browns?!! Don't get me started! Golden Brown, give up your title! You are hereby named burnt orange. Rust Brown? C'mon, you are secretly orange-red. Chocolate Brown, you sounded good, but I'm trading you in for Truffle or Brazilnut.

Hey you dyes... you are FIRED!

not user friendly!

Out of curiosity I ordered a set of Colorhue dyes from Silk Things. Supposedly this is a dye that can be applied to silk which requires no setting chemicals or heat. I had seen a few promising remarks on dye blogs, so I bought the sampler. It says it comes "with instructional booklet".

HA!

The "instructional booklet" does not say how the dyes should be applied. It gives no proportions for diluting them, though the website had implied they were concentrates, no instructions on batching time (if any), nothing. It's the most useless product insert I've seen in a while.

I can only conclude that they want you to drop another $25 on their instructional DVDs! I am just plain disgusted. The website specifically states "There is an excellent instruction guide contained in the sampler which covers clean up, storage, basic application techniques and general handling of the dyes." Riiiight.

One irate email, coming up.

rosewood - experiment 3

rosewood
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Brown and rust tones were applied to this silk on the pole. The silk was not wetted before applying the dye. It's hard to see here (dang, even with a tripod these didn't turn out that well) but some of the reddish and gold patterns look like wood grain.

sunset - experiment 2

sunset
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Scarlet, purple, and tangerine produced this bird-of-paradise combination; it includes shades of light blue in places. This silk was arashi wrapped -- but not resisted!

ripple - experiment 1

ripple
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I'm very sorry, but this photograph utterly bites. What you can't see is the complex series of white (resisted) ripples all over this veil.