The Art of Independent Study #2: A Learning Process
Before anything else, I need to admit that I underestimated my kimono project on so many levels. I did underestimate typical things, like time and difficulty, but I didn’t intend to feel so comfortable with something so new to me. True, the project proved to be challenging, which is what I expected. What I didn’t except was how natural it would feel. Even though I enjoy painting, drawing, and any other art form that you would expect an Art Major to enjoy, working with fabric is, by far, my favorite. It is my love of altering fabric that gave me the ability to evade possible disasters. Even when the task at hand took a turn for the worse, the end-product somehow emerged unscathed.
Right from the beginning, I had lack of time, a small apartment, and, especially, my cats working against me. When it came to cutting material, my two cats, Zeus and Sherman, felt the need to get in on the action by sitting on my material and chasing my rotary cutter. Also, when I was applying dye for the floral design, Zeus really wanted to rub against fabric hanging from the edge of the kitchen counter. Luckily, neither of them ended up with some new coloring or missing whiskers.
(Cutting fabric. Staff Photo/ Alison Miller)
After winning the fight to get my material cut out, I was ready to prepare to dye. The design I chose is a floral pattern moving across an ombré background. The first step for this is to prepare a wax resist. When the wax is applied and the fabric is dyed, the wax resists the dye and keeps that area the original color, in this case white. I had carved out flowers onto flexible, easy to carve blocks (similar to linoleum), which I brushed with wax and stamped onto the white material. The wax hardened quickly so I was able to directly proceed to my first experience with a professional fabric dye.
Most of the tub dyeing went how I planned, without much trouble. There was only one instance when I accidently dyed something I didn’t intend to. I was going about my usual dye routine, but not paying as much attention as I usually do. For your knowledge, I did have my gloves and mask on, despite odd looks from neighbors. However, I didn’t realize that I had my hands further in the dye buckets than I should have. The dye got into my gloves and I didn’t realize it for about twenty minutes. The worst part is that I was using one hand for each of the two colors, so when I took off my gloves I was shocked to find one hand bright red hand and the other bright purple. Although I find it rather funny now, I was too embarrassed during that moment to take a picture for this blog. Fortunately, I was able to wash my hands enough for them to look mostly normal. No one had noticed or, at least, no one let me know that they had noticed.
After the major dyeing was complete and the wax was removed, I had to start “painting” with smaller batches of the dye in order to add color and detail to the white flowers. My first attempt resulted in the dye bleeding and spreading out much wider than the area applied. Another issue arose when the painted dye faded once I did the rinsing process. On top of already not having much time, I had to bleach out the flowers and redo the last step. Then I had to paint on the dye for the flowers twice, with enough drying time in between, to prevent the dye from washing out.
(Painted flowers. Staff Photo/ Alison Miller)
I did learn a trick with the help of my teacher, Randi Reiss-McCormack: the best way to prevent dye from bleeding is to use melted wax to create a border. Since I didn’t do that the first time, I had to create the wax border for both the bleaching step and the re-dyeing step. It was very frustrating having wasted so much time, especially since I had to redo the flowers for the entire body of the kimono. Nevertheless, I soldiered on. I did the sleeves on a separate day, so I was able to do them correctly the first time and they turned out just how I planned. The flowers ended up with a nice, white outline from the wax resist, and dyeing them twice provided the flowers with more shades of color.
(Wax border.Staff Photo/ Alison Miller)
I know I had my fair share of trouble, but nothing caused me to give up or have to start over from scratch. Every problem I faced had a solution, so I consider myself incredibly lucky. I even stumbled upon some irony in that being a poor student came in handy: since I don’t have a lot of money, some of the small, household items I own are pretty cheap in both cost and quality. The reason that came in handy was because, honestly speaking, I ruined a bunch of them during this process. I discovered which of my spatulas are not heat resistant by completely melting one of them. I also learned how easy it is for some chemicals to eat away at the hairs on cheap brushes; I probably ruined at least four.
Even with the mistakes that occurred, I feel extremely prepared for my next dyeing project. You could say that I learned the hard way what not to do when it comes to dyeing fabric!
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Loved seeing (and reading about) the steps taken for this project. Will you post a photo of the finished Kimo? Can’t wait to see it. Great job for your first ever dying project!