Batik class photos

My hand-carved stamps which we use for the class. Pine needles from Africa which we use to splash little spots of wax on.

Ernestine applying wax to her fabric.

Beth putting her waxed fabric in its first dye pot.

Debra doing a African technique called squeezing with squitters fill with left over dye.

Some of the steps to batik fabric, white fabric with 1st. wax, dyed with green, waxed again and dyed with blue, then wax boiled out.

Some of the finished fabrics, their all dripping wet, they will have more contrast when they are dry.

Wet fabrics, this wall was a great place to photograph the fabrics, except they cling to it.

Yasmin (sp?) with her mother rinsing out fabric.

Wet fabric, which I believe when dry, is a plum color.

Rubbing off left over wax after boiling and rinsing with cold water.

A piece of my faric, dry, that I batiked a while ago.

African wax batiking

• Thursday I'm going (the other side of the state) to teach a 3 day workshop on African wax batiking. In 2000, I was fortunate to spend a week with "chief" from Ghanna, Africa who taught me to batik. When he left, he gave me all of his hand-carved stamps. The following are some of my quilts I made with my batiked fabrics. Next week I'll show some of my students work.

Batik sampler. This quilt is a sampler of many of my hand carved stamps. I dyed the lattice strips at the same time as I was batiking.
Kenya, Africa 2002. I made this quilt after my trip to Kenya. The white, blue and gold background fabric I batiked. I bought the center "maasai" batik panel, giraffe, hut fabrics while in Africa. Also, the hand-carved stone elephant beads.

Lizard table runner, Nigerian symbol.

My newest quilt, the purple and gold batik are Nigerian symbols. The mask panel a friend brought me from Ghanna, Africa. The right side outer boarder is traditional quilt fabric. I dyed the yellow lattice strips as I did the batiking.

This is a hand carved door my son-in-law gave me from Nigeria. The top panel is a pineapple, then an elephant, then another pineapple. Someday is will be installed in our dinning room to my garage.

Natural dyed wool quilt

Wool dyed with cochineal (chopped up female insects of tropical America). Cream, plaid wool over dyed, yarn, wool in the first dye batch, yarn after the dye is almost exhausted.

Indigo dyed, left to right, wool fabric, wool yarn, wool yarn first dyed with onion skins than over dyed with indigo (a beautiful turquoise, with shading of the colors), wool yarn first dyed with onion skins than overdyed with indigo, quickly put in the bath and taken right out.

Some of my wool fabrics.

This quilt was made with all natural dyed wool. Deb and I dyed it together (and learned together) when she was living in Michigan. She is my favorite dying partner. Whenever we get together, we still do some type of fabric dying. Each block in this quilt was made as my husband and I traverled around the country in our RV. Each block represents some of our favorite sites. Some represent Alaska, we flew there , then camped and traveled with our friends, Deb and Warren Hardman. As we traveled I worked on the blocks, she worked on hers. Now, I hand quilt it when we are traveling and camping. I have the outside boarders left to do. The boarders represent the 4 seasons in our yard and all of the critters living there. I'll be sad when this quilt is finished, I'll miss working on it, although I am beginning another one.

Top boarder, winter with snowflakes, chickadees, and holly leaves and berries.

Bottom boarder, spring time.

New plants, new colors

Madder root make a wonderful salmon color dye on wool, the dye will go along way.

This yarn was first dyed with onion skins than overdyed with madder root, it has wonderful color variations (in real life), it has the same colors as the snap dragons.

Some people have moose and bear walking around their yards, I have "Peter". He is not afraid, and is always with me as I am dying my wool. He ate all my sunflowers but does not like the taste of wool (hits too close to home).

Last month my family came home and we all went camping, the picture is of me teaching the youngest grandkids how to make sand castles. They liked hitting them with their sticks best.

Natural dying

One of my favorite things to do is natural dying on wool fabric I use in my quilts, but this year, I am also dying wool yarn to use when I go to New Mexico in Sept. and spend a week on the Navajo reservation learning to weave from Sarah Natani, an elderly Navajo woman that has been having workshops on her sheep ranch for many years. My husband and I both will be learning to weave the "Navajo" way. I've been researching it and I'm not sure a week will be enough time to learn!
(pictures are reversed, I'm still learning this Blog thing!)
I began this spring dying with the daffodils in my yard and my employees yard. The wool fabric on the right was dyed from them. The fabric and wool yarn to the left were dyed from dandelions (I have a good crop of them in my yard). The yarn is a wonderful chartreuse, it is 85% wool and 15% mohair and grabs the dye wonderfully and more quickly than the wool fabric.

The rust color wool was dyed from onion skins, the lighter color (fabric and yarn) I dyed in early spring, the darker, rust color was dyed recently with Vadalia onion skins. The last fabric to the left is cotton. I get a much deeper color with wool (I use Alum for mordant, there are much better mordants for cotton).