May VCQ Meeting

Our quarterly Virginia Consortium of Quilters meeting was held in Blackstone, VA, at the Virginia United Methodist Assembly Center on May 11.  A group of us enjoyed a Friday afternoon tour of the Schwartz Tavern.  It is one of 2 original taverns that existed at the crossroads before Blackstone came into existence, and the only one remaining. The very knowledgeable curator shared the history of the tavern and its various owners, and also gave us a tour of the adjacent carriage museum.

The tavern started as only 1 or 2 rooms and was added on to several times.  The furnishings are close to period, based on an inventory of its contents.

There are 2 large mill stones on the exterior of the property.

 

This is an example of a Blacks & Whites quilt, tied to the history of the town and the 2 taverns.  Schwartz is German for "black" and the second tavern was White's Tavern, hence blacks & whites.

This is a portion of the inventory listing the contents of the tavern.

There are some lovely old trees on the property as well.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Great day to be at the Howard County MD fairgrounds for the wool and sheep festival. I have never seen so much wool in one place in my life! And all the yummy colors! It was very crowded - knitters, weavers, felters, spinners, sheep shearing, food trucks - sensory overload! Enjoyed it immensely but came home exhausted!

Batik Show & Tell

Here are a few shots of class show & tell.

And some of the spectacular work of our instructors.

Batik Day 2

This is another piece from day 1.  After the first waxing it was dyed yellow.  The white is the first waxing with tjaps.  What remains yellow is the second waxing after which it was over-dyed red.  I think this piece is successful; I really like it.  

Here is the blue piece from day 1.  It too was waxed a second time (the leaves) and then over-dyed in red as well.  So all the white lines from the first waxing are now red, and the overall color is purple. What remains blue is from the 2nd waxing.  I was less pleased with this outcome, so I made a new blue piece with the same pattern.

Here are 2 more pieces from day 2; both have only 1 waxing - no time for a second layer.   I really like this teal blue color.

We also had some homework after day 1 to create a personal motif and draw it on our fabric.  So on day 2 we also waxed (by hand) and dyed this piece.  The first dye on this was a pretty coral-orange color.  I wanted to dull it some, so over-dyed in black to get this rust color, but now its duller than I wanted and the coral is less vibrant.  Oh well, lessons learned.  It actually doesn't look too bad in the photo.

Tomorrow - pictures of classmates creations!

Indonesian Batik Workshop

I was very fortunate this past week to be able to participate in a 2-day batik workshop at Artistic Artifacts with Indonesian batik artists Agus Ismoyo and Nia Fliam.  They are in the US for the opening of an exhibit in which they are featured, Out of Southeast Asia,  at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC. It was a very full 2 days, starting with learning about the ancient creative process of batik, symbols that form the basis for traditional designs, and getting in touch with our own creative source.  We started by learning to create designs by hand with the tjanting tool seen here is 3 sizes.

Ismoyo instructed us in the techniques for using tjaps. the copper tool used for stamping batik designs.  The wax pan has a layered pad in the center (copper, wire screening, and several layers of fabric); the tjaps are placed around the outside of the pan to heat, and tapped on the center pad to coat it with wax that is then applied to the fabric. The fabric is placed on a foam pad that is saturated with cold water, so when the hot wax on the stamp is pressed into the pad, it immediately solidifies.

After the wax is applied, its time for dyeing.  They use napthol dyes which is a different process than we use in the US.  There are different pre-soak base mixtures that determine the color resulting from the color solution.  Its all very confusing!  After dyeing and a 15 minute post-soak, it goes into boiling water to remove the wax and then a cold water rinse.  The colors are rich and fabulous!

Above are my first 2 pieces from Day 1.  The red one is my "doodle" piece, learning to use the tjanting tool.  The blue piece has a hand done border, with a stamped tjap design in the center.  The blue piece was waxed again and over-dyed the 2nd day. More pictures tomorrow.

 

Tie-dye Reveal

Well, obviously I didn't get this post up on Wednesday as planned.  If you've been checking back to see the T-shirts revealed, here they are - a sampling, anyway.  Each one is a little different, but they're all cool!

 Here's a portion of the team in their shirts - they won their first game!  Yay!!

Team America Tie Dye!

My daughter plays on a kickball team in DC, calling themselves Team America.  A while back, she mentioned that she wanted to tie dye their shirts.  Well, last week we finally got down to some specifics, since the first game is coming up on Thursday.  I haven't done much tie dyeing nor given this project much thought, and it suddenly dawned on me that she was talking about the shirts for the ENTIRE TEAM - 25! With the weekend already busy (teaching a class and attending a wedding), Sunday was the only time to get this done.  We looked at some books for tying options (while riding to and from the wedding), and since she wanted red, white & blue, decided to try a spiral design.  After arriving home from the wedding Sunday (an overnight trip), we went out shopping for the additional supplies needed. - who knew inexpensive kitty litter pans would be so hard to find?  Then we finally got everything assembled and started tying the circular bundles with rubber bands. We used 3 bands on each to make 6 wedges, so we would have 2 wedges each of red, white and blue. After that, they went into a soda ash solution to soak for 20 minutes.  My daughter's friend arrived to help, and later on, her sister and another friend.  I mixed up the dye, and they did the application. 

  We used cooling racks from the dollar store and foil grill pans to elevate the shirts off the bottom of the pans, so they wouldn't sit in the dye that dripped all the way through.  Then they had to sit for 24 hours.  Come back tomorrow for the results!