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Zomg what a week!
In addition to dailies and boss fights in Firelands, real life goes on, and it has been going on in a rather full manner. Man Cub is finally back from vacation in FL (where he had a blast, thank you), I’m still temping four days a week, and my application to vend over at the Holden Farmer’s Market* was accepted.
Which means that I’ve been sewing my little heart out. On Sunday I stitched and stitched while both The Fifth Element and Serenity played, as well as three This American Life podcasts, and two episodes of Firefly. And I made a whole bunch of rather pretty (I think!) shopping totes =D I put some up on Etsy this morning, too, if you’d like to check them out.
And speaking of Etsy – the lovely Ms. Lavoie over at Maple Street Shoppes has rounded a bunch of us MA locals together on her webbie. If you go visit my page by her, you’ll find a coupon code you can use at my Etsy shop.
The rest of the week has been awash in gardening and taking care of business. Read the rest of this entry »
Who gets up at 6am on a Saturday when they don’t have to work? For reals- Will will tell you out of hand that Saturdays are for sleep till eleven. Man Cub would make that nine instead, for there are video games to be played and cartoons to be watched on a Saturdays, amirite? Regardless, Saturdays are customarily for sleeping in at No. 208.
But this last Saturday we all rolled out of bed and got our butts in gear. We packed the car all full of tee shirts that I had batiked up in the basement over the last month, the hats that I had made over the course of a year, and a bunch of sticky labels with ‘Apple Batiks’ printed on them, and headed up to East Brookfield.
Super fantatsic Ms. Kris Lavoie has put together a really great concept – she’s doing home-grown craft fairs at her house, under the moniker of The Maple Street Shoppe (the link is to FB – go ahead and like her, meow meow). The idea is to support local community by purchasing from artisans that live in the area.
Nice! Got all the stuff that involves the oven finished before the house gets too hot to want to cook. There’s a pasta salad chilling in the fridge for after Man Cub’s soccer practice, and bread is baked. I got the dishes (with the exception of the loaf pans, which are still hot) done in the cool hours of the morning, and did yoga before it got warm enough for the cat hair in the carpet to stick to my skin. This afternoon, in anticipation of Thursday’s heat wave, we shall install the ac units, and set up Pretty Pretty Princess Land*. \o/
In other news, I made the fancy yoga mat bag for Zoe! Look! Look!
Zoe had been biking to yoga class with her mat stuffed into her backpack, and it wasn’t working out for her – it bonked her in the back of the head, it got in the way when she looked over her shoulder, and was generally a nuisance. She wanted a big wide comfy strap so she could wear it messenger bag style and have it sit tight and not wobble. Also, the bag needed to be wide enough to accommodate her ittty bitty laptop for visits to the library and sundry other writing expeditions, as well as having a non-rounded bottom so said lappy doesn’t bounce around in the bottom.
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True black is getting closer! No, we’re not quite there yet, but I got a nice rich slate grey this time instead of dove grey.** There’s still a bottle of Procion Jet Black in the cabinet, but this time I went with Soft Black instead (because I’m still scurred of the Jet Black). I was worried for the first hour of the dye bath that I would wind up with plum, but then as the salt started to take effect, much to my delight, everything got darker – all at once, even: BOOM.
So there’s new stuff up in the shop this morning, after hanging out in the basement a whole bunch this weekend.
Not only is the basement, like, 10º cooler than the rest of the house, but I’ve revamped my workspace to make it a whole lot of more comfortable to work in. For one thing, goodbye to leaning over the stove next to a boiling pot! I picked up a $12 hotplate cooker thingsy with an adjustable dial. Which means I can sit at the table now \o/
ZOMG, it’s been so dreary around here with all the rain! So this week has been a bluesy mess* while it was busy raining outside, and I’ve been trying to give that icky stuff the smackdown by keeping busy. But this morning I woke to sunshine, and my Google page promises sun through the Friday \o/
So let me show you what I’ve been up to this wet wet week! I’ve been doing some custom batik stuff. A tiny dino tee came out zomgdorible, and I just got an assignment for a pretty mat bag that can be worn messenger-style while biking. The fabric for the bag came out of the dryer last night super pretty – lotuses! I’m looking forward to making a bag out of this and playing around with the shape of it. The client wants something particular, and I’m excited about the prospect of meeting what she wants.
I’m also working on new designs – a custom kitty and ladybug are in the works at the moment, and I’m hoping to knock those out and be ready to do another dye bath on Friday.** But the big design thing I’ve been working on is clouds.
I’ve been feeling a little blue this week – the job search has been an annoying litany of, “I’m sorry, but you’re over-qualified,” and other pursuits are blooming in their own time (read: slowly), and my arms are a little sore from yoga. Life just had me by the tail there for a little bit, y’know? So I wanted to do something nice for myself.*
I had some test fabric left from the batch of tees that I made last weekend. A Hanuman print that came out pretty on plain muslin. I’d had it sitting since last week, trying to decide what to do with it.** Well, a girl can always use a handbag, right? Right!
Monday was an ambitious day in the basement, where I keep my studio. I had gotten some special orders, and they required two tub baths, so at 7:3o, as soon as Will and Man Cub were off for the day, I headed down and dug in. I think I finished around 4 in the afternoon?
I’m definitely getting better with the colors, and that’s super exciting. I even stopped the second dye bath early because the first had turned out so rich, and I wanted that one to come out less saturated. In the end, I got a dusty-grapey purple with some blue mottling, and a yummy clay red/wine stain. Also, the under-painting on the sugar skulls (pix under the cut) came out bright and vibrant the way I had hoped. \o/
Some of this process is easier than other bits. I’m finding out that getting a white t-shirt to be a black t-shirt is one of the more difficult parts. This weekend I’ve run two batches, and come up with two very different results.
One result was a super pretty dove grey -
And while I’m pleased with how the tees came out, and even put some up on the Etsy, friends, grey is just not black.
So after that batch, I made some calls and asked people who know stuff about cold process dyeing. I told those people my process, and they hmm’d and huh’d, and we came up with two possible problems, so I worked on them.
One possible issue was the way I’ve been working with the soda ash. So far I’ve been pouring the crystals into the dye bath at the end and agitating the water to dissolve it. One of the recommendations I got was to dissolve the soda ash in water before adding it to the fabric. Easy. I added it to my list.
I’ve finally gotten the batik shirts up on Etsy! Come and browse – there’s lots of baby/kid stuff, and a few adult tees. Like this one -
Also, zomg, I’ve joined the ranks of Facebook. If you would like to like the shop over there =)
More pix under the cut.
All tees are hand painted and dyed using soy wax and fiber reactive dyes.
The process involves soda ash, but that gets washed away entirely in the process of removing the wax at the end, so no worries for baby’s tender skin. The color may or may not fade a little over time, but shouldn’t have a dramatic effect. Nonetheless, it’s wise to wash these shirts the first few times with like colors. Also, they won’t shrink; I’ve hot washed them within an inch of their lives =) Read the rest of this entry »
More new stuff from yesterday. The tub color was supposed to be raspberry, and we thought it was going to be much darker when it was in the tub. But it turned out sort of a deep pink when everything was said and done.
I tried more of the two color, and it’s still yieldin
g results that look faded, despite laying it on so saturated that it took four hours (4!) to dry before it could be waxed over. The next step is going to be to try adding urea pellets to the brush applied dye, and see if that gives better results. Also, I can try laying down soda water again before painting. The batching was supposed to eliminate that step – it certainly boosts the tub dying vividness – but it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick just yet.
On the other hand, some of the single color ones came out far more spectacular than I thought they would. Halfway through the process of waxing, I was sure I had wasted the t-shirts, but I dyed them anyway figuring, hey, it’s a learning experience.
