state of grace

Happy here. This one went like sliding on banana peels. Effortless, one go no stop until the end. It felt good for a change to have no doubts.The background is polenta crackle + discharged and stamped and over painted with some opalescent green paint. The gorgeous ocher fabric is from an American lady friend, Penny Mora, who lives in Madrid. It just brought everything together. The stitching was free and fun, no pretense here. There's some more on the background just to add slight visual markings.

After such exhilaration i have to sit down and start doing some drawing. One cannot live on serendipity land forever,

neki desu

poor girl indigo

Or how to turn 2 flops into a relative success.

Another summer of total indigo flop.Fermented it has and it smells awful,but it hasn't reduced. To combat frustration i took this scarf from the YUCKK pile and dyed it itajime style. It was in the YUCKK pile because i warped it for double weave one layer in unmercerised cotton and the other in silk hoping for collapsed. It did not happen, well it did but in such a slight way that it does not merit to be called collapse. It is more of a texture, the warp stripes on the sides in cotton slightly ribbed and the checks in the center slightly raised. The scarf had also some weaving flaws.

Nothing to lose.Bought dark blue Dylon which funnily it's not listed on the website and tried some clamping without much thinking. The color is much more indigo looking than in the photo.In the end it came out well and i have claimed another one from the pile.
The photo is not one of my bests but i sort of liked the color scheme.

neki desu

flour resists

Lately i have been experimenting with different flour resists, started out by using Complex Cloth's mashed potatoes resist recipe, then went on my own. i have experimented with a mixture of cornmeal and cornstarch paste and rice flour paste to get a crackle textured background. As it was experimental i kept it simple by using fabric paints instead of thickened dyes and used scrunch dyed cotton fabric dyed with procion MX.

My personal conclusions:

• The mashed potatoes recipe gives a very flexible paste, good for stamping, not too good crackle.
• The rice flour paste if very thin gives an interesting veiny crackle.
• i used a rice flour layer, sponged paint on it , let it dry, re covered with more paste and re painted it with another color. This gives depth in the crackle.
• Cornmeal and cornstarch paste gives an interesting granular crackle- my favorite.

Tips:

• rub the paint to create splotches within the crackled surface.
• use two different colors for more visual texture.
• use metallic paints for extra zing.
• work in layers- interesting results can be obtained.
• different crackle effects can be obtained if the fabric is dried stretched or flat.
• a bit of tugging on the bias when the fabric is dry improves the crackle. Ditto fro crumpling.
• if you get an amazing crackle scan it and digitalize it so you can print it on fabric and use it again!

i want to get cassava flour and experiment with it. Most of the batik cloth from Africa uses it as a resist. And while on the African topic check this site out.
Let me know of your experiments.


neki desu