Rust and mud dyeing pieces

Well, I wrapped up my 2 experiments today. The mud-dye piece didn't come out the way I thought it would, but I'm not totally disappointed... it has interest, and I may do some more experimenting in that direction. What I had hoped for was more of the 'red-rock' color, but I guess our soil isn't red enough.

Here's the final on the rust-dye experiment:



This is the complete piece

The 2 pictures above are closeups of the rust marks of the top picture. The best marks came from the rebar and the chain, but a subsequent session with metal washers did not make any marks that I can see.
What is interesting is that the pieces of metal had no rust on them when I started last weekend. But now they are rusting nicely. I just need to work on getting a good contact between the fabric and the metal. Also, I have been using muslin, and I think I want to try a fabric that is a little more absorbent, mabe a looser weave. I can see more rust play-dates in my future!

Rebar's the ticket!

I just unwrapped my fabric from the rebar and got good results so far! I decided to re-wrap and add to it, but here's a picture of the progress from this morning:
Meanwhile, I checked on my mud-dyeing experiment, but it didn't come out very well... either I don't have enough minerals to change the color or it hasn't stayed in the slurry long enough... anyway, I put it back in to 'batch' some more... will check back later on that.
While I was at it, I did some experiments with using leaves and thickened dyes to make impressions on fabric. Some worked well, others didn't, but then I rolled out another color over the fabrics, and that enhanced the images considerably. They are 'batching' now, so I will post pictures when they are rinsed out.