OKL's Off-to-College Kalediacam Star

OKL's Off-to-College Kaleidacam Star

I was tasked with making the invitations for Oliver's Off-to-College Party.  He did not want a high school graduation party because he was only doing what was expected of him -- nothing special.  So we framed it as going off to college, the next phase of his life.  

After spending the afternoon looking for invitation templates that just did not fit this kid's personality, I finally settled on Kaleidacam of one of his kid artworks I have hanging in my sewing studio, a watercolor painting of summer salamanders.  He doesn't really consider himself artistic, so the artworks are kind of rare, but I kept a few.  That's what mothers do! ;-)

Sakura Pallette

Sakura Pallette - Pink and Grays 

Still showcasing Candy G.'s favorite analogous color palettes from her Fabric Dyeing 103 class on multi-color fabrics.  In truth I diverged a bit from the proscribed colors in this lesson. 

Candy had a Tiger Lily pallette with orange amongst the grays.  I oped to swap out the rusty orange for a light pink, which I dubbed Sakura, in honor of cherry blossoms.

Part of the reason I wanted to take this class was to combine colors on clothing blanks.   I have a dress I want to do in this color scheme. ;-)

 Here's the accordion-pleated half yard.  I love the way this turned out!

 Here are the individual fat quarters staged atop the scrumbled half yard.

 Detail shot.  I am intrigued by the places where the original colors meet.  Where they come together, we get entirely new colors mixing on the fabric.

 In this one you can see a hint of lavendar where the pink and gray comes together.

 Detail shots from the accordion-pleated half yard.  

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse

Still showcasing Candy G.'s favorite analogous color palettes from her Fabric Dyeing 103 class on multi-color fabrics.  I'm rather fond of this one myself.  ;-)  Blue to black.

 

Here's the sample swatch, accordion-pleated in the dye pot. 

 Her'es the larger half yard, accordion pleated, batching in the dye pot.

Here's the scrumbled half yard, batching int he dye pot.

 Results of Lunar Eclipse with the 3 individually dyed fat quarters 

staged atop the scrumbled half yard.

 Detail shot of the scrumbled Lunar Eclipse.

 Another shot of the Lunar Eclipse Pallette.

 Her'e shte accordion-pleated half yard, unfurled.

Moss Green

Moss Green

Still showcasing Candy G.'s favorite analogous color palettes from her Fabric Dyeing 103 class on multi-color fabrics.   Green to black.

Here's the sample accordion pleat batching in the low-water immersion dye pot. 

Rich deep colors gave me a lot of hope for this one!

 

Here's the scrumbled half yard batching in the dye pot.

Here are the 3 isolated colors dyed on individual fat quarters atop the scrumbled half yard.
You can see a fair amount of yellow in the green.  I'd forgotten to re-mix the dye before I poured it.  The yellow has a tendency to settle out.  Not quite what I was hoping for.

Here's another view.

 Here's the accordion pleated half yard.  Again, the light was a little odd when I took the photograph, so it' doesn't quite look like it does in real life.

Here's a detail shot, with truer colors.

Moonlit Moth

Moonlit Moth Palette

Still showcasing Candy G.'s favorite analogous color palettes from her Fabric Dyeing 103 class on multi-color fabrics.  I'm rather fond of this one myself.  ;-)  Light Purple to grays.

 Here are all 4 individually dyed colors isolated on their own fat quarter, staged atop a multi-colored scrumbled half yard.

 Here's the accordion-pleted half yard.  Again, the light was funny when and where I photographed this one, so it doesn't quite look true to life. 

Another view of Moonlit Moth.

Bing Cherry Pallette

Bing Cherry

Still showcasing Candy G.'s favorite analogous color palettes from her Fabric Dyeing 103 class on multi-color fabrics.  I'm rather fond of this one myself.  ;-)  Red to black.

Bing Cherry - Accordion folded pleated half yard.
The light was a little funny on this one.

Here's a shot of the 4 colors dyed onto individual fat quarters, show-cased atop
the scrumbled half yard.

Shades of Turquoise

Shades of Turquoise

4 fat quarters staged with the scrumbled fat half yard.

There doesn't seem tobe much difference between the light turquoise and the plain turquoise.  

Detail of the accordian pleated half yard.

I don't think I got any shots of the fabric batching in it's bins for this one. 

Tints of Grape

Tints of Grape

Just documenting my homework in the Candy G's Dyeing 103 : Multicolored Cloth.

Here's the sample accordion fold 5-inch square batching in the dye pot.

This is low-water immersion, so it's not actually a dye pot.

Here's the scrumbled half yard in the dye pot. 

You can see how deep the colors are in the pot, and how much gets washed out by the end ...

I am using Roclon muslin for the class.  No-- it was not recommended by Candy.  That's my fault.  I didn't realize it had a permanent press finish on it.   That important fact was not stated in the online description, or I would have chosen something else.  That may be why my final product is not as brilliant as I'd hoped.

Here are the scrumbled fat quarters batching in their bins.

It's a nice visual of the depth of color between the different tones.

 Here's the 1/2-yard piece in the folded accordion format, batching in the bin.

Detail from the washed and dried accordion-folded half yard. 

 Here's another shot of it.

Here's the scrumbled half yard, staged with the individually dyed fat quarters.

The color is kind of washed out here, but I hope you get the idea.

Dyeing Again : Revisiting an Old Class with Candied Fabrics

 Tints of Grape

Tints are where you mix in white -- or in this case -- water, to lighten the base hue.

I purchased access to this online class, Dyeing Multicolor Fabric, back in 2014 or 2015, but haven't taken the time to really dig into it.  Candy G. provides many hours of expert video instruction coupled with the recommended hands-on time in our own studios.   On top of that, she is very accessible, and responsive to questions.  Since I bought the class all those years ago, I've decided that winters are just too cold to be in the basement slogging through the lessons, and summers haven't been hot enough to drive me down there (the only cool spot in our house)-- until this a few weeks ago.  Yes -- you've seen me dyeing yarn and some clothing recently.  That gave me the push to learn more about creating multi-color palettes, and combining colors.

If you want to mix your own colors from primaries, I highly recommend Candie's Dyeing 101 class for Controlling Color, where you create The Candiotic Table (Think of The Periodic Table of Elements) and develop color mixing recipes from 3 or 6 primary colors.   This single class was a game-changer for me, and blew the door open on being able to mix and recreate specific colors.   I often refer back to those tables as references for what colors I can mix myself, without buying multiple prepared colors.  Then again -- The serendipity approach can be fun to experiment with, too!

Last summer I had good intentions -- bought the supplies and prepared the fabric.  I think I might have even watched some of the first lessons.  But I never quite got around to dyeing ...  I'd also forgotten just how much preparation needs to happen BEFORE you can get to pouring color on fabric.  Most of this afternoon was spent cutting the fabric into the required parcels (It was already pre-washed / scoured from lat summer), soaking it in soda ash solution, mixing up the dye concentrates, and pleating or scrumbling the fabric parcels to get interesting textures. 

This weekend, I'm starting with the monochromatics -- That's where you take 1 color and mix varying intensities of that 1 color from darker to lighter, and throw all of that onto the same piece of cloth.   This technique alters the value of the color.  You never have to worry about the colors clashing, because it's always the same base color, just different depths of tints, shades, and tones.

Past supper time, I was finally getting to where I could measure out the dyes in the required tints to finally pour the grape tints on the fabric.  These will batch overnight.  Hopefully, I'll get through 4 more sets tomorrow night after work--

Worked through Tints of Grape (see photo at the top of this post)

and Shades of Turquoise.

Shades are where you add black to darken a base hue.

Next time, I'll show you the mixed color pallets!

Colors of Santorini

Food for the senses!

I took this macro a while back of a tomateo husk.  I love the textures and the details.  It happened to be on top of the blue place mat.  Just that color blue and cream reminded of of those pictures from Santorini in Greece.

I've been dyeing a lot of cloth for an online class, but it will take ma a little while to catalog and photograph it all.  In the meantime, enjoy this photo.  Cheers!