Such textile designs look so good. Let me introduce you some designs of the textiles. First, here's my weekly quilt, 31/52.2009 ~ Forest Light. It was kind of a scrap piece, with leftovers and odd bits. The honeycomb vertical piece is a strip of hand woven cotton and tencel. This was one of several samples I wove in the Woven Shibori class I took several years ago, fabrics that I've been using in quilts recently. Back when they were woven, they were dyed with natural dyes that weren't lightfast, unfortunately. So I over dyed them, stamped on them, etc.
Nowadays, the fabric and textile printing always choose the digital textile printers. Not only the fabric print, textile prints are fabulous with the elaborate design. The fabric in the upper left with the large color areas is cotton flannel. I had about a yard that was LWI dyed recently. Flannel is really lovely fabric to work with ~ it dyes magnificently, is really soft, and quilts well. I recommend it if you haven't tried it yet.
It looks really similar to batch two, on which I used Procion MX #300, but the #44 is just slightly purple.
Last night I had a couple of great ideas for using these black shiboried fabrics, so today I did my fourth black batch, this time with Cibacron Rich Black #F61. I actually shiboried with this black dye a while ago but thought perhaps I'd made a mistake -- because the white pattern areas turned out pink! Well, it happened again today and now I realize that this particular black dye, although great for overall dyeing (I had a pair of Scotty's jeans in the pot and they turned out beautifully), it's not to be used for shibori. One of the Procion black dyes, #250, specifically says it shouldn't be used for shibori, although it gives a deep black in full immersion, and I suspect this is the same dye as the Cibacron Rich Black.
But at the same time, screen printing is also in used. So does the screen printer. Well, black and pink isn't so terrible, if you're into the 1950's, poodle skirts, T-Birds, and all that, but since the black in these shibori pieces is really more of a navy blue...in short, the fabric is pretty icky looking. I think Scotty just got more custom dyed RAGS for work!