May Rust Dyes

Here's what I did over the Memorial Day Weekend :


The Arashi pole-wrapped fabric about to be unwrapped ... I have some beautiful rusty poles who are more than happy to be of service to the world again!

The other is a rusty cookie tin that has also found new life as a rust dying vessel. I soaked all my fabrics in a 50/50 solution of water and vinegar. The I lightly (barely) rung them out and wrapped them around the poles. For the old cookie tin, I crumbled some white muslin, then sprinkled some rust dust on top of the crumbled fabric. On top of that, I emptied a tea bag. Covered it with another piece of fabric wrapped around a trivet, covered it in plastic and let it sit for a day. After 24 hours, I checked their progress and added a little more of the vinegar-water solution to make sure things were not drying out, and let them sit for another day. I think adding the extra vinegar water a day later helped to "melt" the tea so it gave some nice watercolor effects in the purple-grays.

The rusted cookie tin gave me my favorite piece of this session :






Detail from rusted cookie tin with tea.






This is the image transfer from the rusty trivet. I set it atop of the cookie tin, so the edges were dipping into the tea topping. It made the edges a nice purple gray. Unexpected, but pleasant!

Here are some of the other pieces. Some of these were done last year with the Purple Misses Alternative Rust Dye Method. Unfortunately most of the color washed out. However, some of them kept a rusty pastel undercoat to them ...