Tjaps

I was playing with my tjaps today and these are the results. It worked better this time because I didn't use as much wax. Having a felt pad in the pan to use as a stamp pad seemed to work better than just dipping it in a pool of wax. I also did up a padded board, rather than just using some padding under the plastic sheet. Just used an old tshirt on a piece of cardboard covered with plastic. Since the tjaps are used, they are a bit uneven.

The solid red and green ones are silk hankies. It is nice to have small, inexpensive items to practice with. The other times I've tried using them on silk they carried way to much wax and it wicked too much. The color looks a little off because they haven't been steamed yet.



The multicolor is another practice shirt. Previously known as one I would wear while painting. I'm going to give it a try on an actual shirt and see how it turns out. I needed to do some touch up on it so I want to see how well it blocks the wax. It hasn't been dyed yet, so the wax doesn't show very boldly.

Variety

Not all of the scarves I've done lately have been red, I've also done some blue & purple. I'm really happy how the pattern on this one turned out. Tilting it up on one side makes the dye move differently. It kind of looks like little snowballs rolling down a hill.

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.

Dreams

This makes we want to sing a modified Christmas song I'm dreaming of a psychedelic Christmas.

Project

These pictures are the same project.
In the first one, the scarf has been stretched and painted with dye. The salt was just sprinkled on it.



The next one is after it dried. The salt pulled the dye into the patterns. It looks a bit lighter than it will after it's been steamed.



The last one is after steam setting, washing and ironing. Although it is Crepe de Chine and wouldn't need to be ironed, you know how it is when you'll be showing it to a lot of other people.



Did I mention that I really like the pattern the salt makes in the dye? The one on the stretchers right now I put a lot more salt on & smaller granules. We'll see how that ones turns out.
I also want to try some kosher salt. So far, I've been using rock salt. Kosher would be much smaller flakes. I'm hoping for a more 'foamy' appearance.

Stretching

This is the setup I use to stretch silk scarves. The frame is some left over salvaged flooring. What I installed upstairs looks a lot better than this.

By assembling it like a pinwheel, it makes it easy to adjust the size. The tongue and groove of it helps keep the pieces in place better.
The red things are regular woodworking clamps.
The blue silk hooks are attached with rubber bands to keep tension. When silk scarves get dampened they stretch a bit.
On the table is heavy vinyl from the fabric store.
I don't want the scarf to sit right on the vinyl so I put some pieces of 2x4s under the frame to elevate it.

More

I've been busy getting items done for the Women's Art Festival on the 11th, a week from tomorrow. Of course, I expect everyone I know to by just dyeing to be there. (Did I mention I tell bad jokes.) I'll have a lot more choices then.

We'll see how much more I can get done in a week. Just so long as I'm not up until midnight the night before. When we have to be up early the next morning to load the car and set up, we notice we aren't as young as we'd like to be. Just so long as I remember my pepsi.