Finishing out the year

My show season ended last weekend with the Mountain Campus Holiday Show,

 and I am busy working to finish up some custom orders:

This is a variation on my Autumn Leaves batik, but the buyer wanted greens instead of the traditional autumn colors.  I think I will need to make more of these!

This is an experiment I did on a Habotai silk scarf with an allover leaf pattern.  I won't go into all the complexities of the process I used, but it is the first batik I have successfully achieved on silk.

Next on my list is an order to dye 20 shirts for a local artist who will be screen printing an original design on them, then selling to a shop in nearby Williams... can't wait to see how they turn out!  

And I am hoping to sell some of my work to Flagstaff General Store, a new store that opened on Friday. 

I have lots of half-formed ideas stewing in my brain that I hope to hatch in the coming months... another winter of tinkering, imagining, experimenting... I love these months between shows when I get to play!  Then before I know it, another season will start and I'll be off and running again.  I hope to do a little better job of posting here... lately it has just been too hectic to even think!  So bear with me as I take a breath, stare off into space for a few moments, then get back on track!

Dye-na-flow and Batik-EZ shirt

Following the resist experiment I posted about last week, I decided to try using dye-na-flow and Batik-EZ to create a shirt from a Jacquard Tutorial I found on line.  I didn't follow the instructions to the letter, but did my best to use them as a guideline for my project.  I may go back and add a little after studying the results, but here is what I have so far:

The instructions said to iron on freezer paper to the inside of the shirt, to avoid having the dye-na-flow bleed through.  I tried this, but found the result to be very awkward to work with, so I removed the freezer paper and inserted foam board that I had covered in plastic, then used spring clamps and T-pins to anchor the fabric before I applied the Batik-EZ.  I did one side of the shirt at a time, then allowed the Batik-EZ to dry before I moved to the next side.  Once I had all the stenciling done, I applied the dyes.  The tutorial from Jacquard said to do one color, then do some more stenciling, then apply another color.  I ended up putting all 3 colors - yellow, green, and blue - on at one time.  The front was the first side I applied paints to, and I wasn't quite sure how much water to apply before painting on the dyes... I got a lot of dry brush strokes before I added in some more water.  After that, I brushed on sufficient water before the dye-na-flow to allow it to blend better.  Live & Learn!  The last thing I did was insert smaller pieces of covered foam board to the sides and sleeves in order to apply the dye-na-flow.  I got some overlap, but I think it came out pretty good for a first try.  What I do know is this is something I can't see doing for my shop... way too lengthy a process to make it cost effective.  However, I do think I can add the stenciling to dyed shirts, and plan to try that next.  Stay tuned for more adventures!