a much better week

Leaving last week's failure alone, I went back to my images.

Maybe the red operators were a mistake. This time, I'm going with a heavy black shape, a woman sitting at the machine.

The resist is ironed and basted onto a sleeve, with additional wheels added to the original resist pattern, and the black shape on top. Into the boil... twice, with 2 different pieces of darker wool.

Fresh out of the oven, on the kitchen floor, with only the black wool removed.

I LOVE the variable levels of black in the print! It brings it to life! And the hands are better, too. After I posted last week's operators, my sister wrote "the gray figures behind the machines -- bothers me. Especially their hands. They don't look like they're operating the machines; just holding on to them, or posing with them. Their hands are open, the fingers spread apart, not manipulating anything".  Yes, so I spent a good deal of effort to get each tiny woolen finger in the exact right place here. These hands are fully engaged in their work!

And the darker wools had amazing dye transfers:

YES: even the THREADS transferred color!! so..

Note: one of the darker wools was a very dark brown; the second boiling had a medium brown wool. Here you're seeing pieces of both of these being basted down to form a background for the printed sleeve. And volia!

THIS IS PERFECT. 1.Content, 2.content (strongly) related to materials, 3.visual power: got it.The interaction between the dark & light wool is obvious. The light/dark wools combine for such great contrast!!! I think that even non-sewing people will be able to read this as a clothing segment.  Happy, Happy Happy!!! (although, some children who saw it asked if it was a bicycle....)

The minute this success was up drying on the line, I was back at my computer designing more.

This operator is morphing into the sewing machine legs (the gray parts of this image).

cutting out the black woolen section, and then...

Next sleeve. On the left is a printout of the design to help me figure out which part goes on top  as I pin it down.

I am really on a roll here. While I was basting this one to the sleeve, I printed out the next one:

Cut, baste, boil. This time, I decide to flip the dark wool over, mid-boil, so the light wool gets color from both sides. And I boiled the 2 sleeves at the same time. And we have:

Just before I laid the dark wet wool on top, I added a few strands of the thread, letting it wiggle over the image. AND THE COLOR TRANSFERRED! Some of the black color migrated a bit further than I wanted, but it still works. Oh yes!

Here's the spool of dark red thread. Look at the blue arrow - it's pointing at the marks left after I pull out the stitches. So much color has transferred that the marks are darker that the remaining stitches. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT!! to have the marks of the stitches, the archaeological evidence that stitching happened here, on the cloth.  

And do we have additional color transfer on the dark wool? YES:

The steam is rising off the wool. And I'm back at the computer designing the next one. Quite a good week. hope yours is too!

 comments? email me at dianesavona@aol.com