More Dyeing. . .

I signed up for a class at Craftsy- The Art of Cloth Dyeing with Jane Dunnewold.  Honestly, I was less interested in the chemistry of how she dyes, and more so in how she approaches layering and creating patterns on the cloth.  She talked about maybe having more classes on Craftsy- I hope she does one that is more surface design oriented.

She showed various ways to fold the cloth, and I fell in love with her flag fold.  I can't remember if I've done it before, but I got some tips to make the folding easier.  One piece I did was the rayon bamboo scarf that I bleach discharged a few weeks ago.  The other was a piece of "ugly" cloth I got from Barbara on the MX Dyers group.  Here's the piece as I got it--

I had a hard time seeing it as ugly- it had lovely patterning on it, and luscious shades of green, yellow, and brown.  The white didn't bother me at all either.  But in the spirit of the ugly fabric challenge, I played along.  First I flag folded it, squished it between two pieces of plexiglass held with rubber bands, and dunked it in a bleach solution.  I left it a bit too long, because there wasn't much color left.  Here it is as I'm flag folding it again--

You can kind of see the flag folding marks on this one, and you can see how little green is left.  After I got it back between the plexiglass, I dunked it in grape dye.  I only used a 1 percent solution, I wish I'd used a 5 percent.  I didn't leave it sitting in the dye, I just dunked the three edges and then left it to batch for several hours.  And this is how it turned out--

Very different from the original fabric.  I'm still considering what to add with additional layers, it doesn't feel done to me.  The one on the right is the rayon bamboo scarf, you can just see the old patterning under the flag fold lines.  I think this is a vast improvement.

I am itching to spend another day waxing and dyeing, but I suspect it may have to wait a couple of weeks.  I have a little bit of quilting to do on my Tangled Textiles piece, and then I need to get it faced.  Maybe if I can find the energy to get the quilting done after work this week?  We shall see. . .