Dots and dots

I've been playing with dots lately.  How the silk is prepared makes a difference in the resulting pattern. Both scarves were stretched on a frame first and I used Jacquard Red Label steam set dye.

The nice, round dots are from when the silk is dampened evenly first.  The dye spreads evenly into a circle.  Since I didn't let the fabric and dye dry between colors the dots blend together.

The one with the irregular dots I treated with spray starch first and waited for it to dry.  I let the dots dry between colors so they wouldn't blend.  You can see how the dye wicked along the fibers in a much different way.  It also has a more defined line around the outside of the dot.  This is related to when you spill something on fabric you should wet it (depending on the fabric) so it doesn't have such a defined line.

The sun

The first picture is one of the sun that I found due to this blog post, and is amazing. Who knew that the sun could look like that?


So this scarf is what I hope is similar colors. I would love to create something that looks exactly the same as the image. But I haven't figured that out yet.

Metals

Don't worry, I don't plan to wear these all together. But they have a common color.

All three silk scarves were braided together and dyed bronze. Then re-braided separately and dyed orange, green and maroon/purple. I really like the way the colors separate and combine. By having them braided the dye can't get to all parts of the scarf. But like the test strip samples, the dye doesn't absorb all at the same rate as it soaks into the fabric.