Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / Where to start?
Previous post: Thermofax triumph!
Next post: Dyers’ dreams

March 2, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Where to start?

My goodness, what was I doing moping last week when there is so much to do???

On my to-do list for this weekend:

  • Print lots of T-shirts.  I have eight full-screen designs meant to go onto T-shirts – mostly straight copies of the royalty-free designs in the Dover books, with a few adaptations here and there.  (The intent is to get wearable clothing and practice screen printing, not create the next Work of Art!)
  • Dye some clothing in mottled colors.  I had intended to work with dyeing, discharge, and redyeing, but I found out today that not all colors of Cibacron F (my preferred fiber-reactive dye) will discharge gracefully, and there is a good chance of getting muddy greens if I attempt discharging it.  So instead I will screen print, paint with thickened dyes, and then either leave the shirt off-white or apply wax to the colored sections, then overdye (the wax protects the already-dyed areas).
  • Dye some clothing in solid colors.  In particular, I want to dye the sweatpants black and then screen print on them.  (I reserve the right to paint one pair with orange stripes to make tiger sweats!)
  • Practice four-color printing with my dragon design.
  • Create some quilting fabrics by dyeing and printing on fabrics.  I am torn about this one.  Dyeing enough fabric for the entire quilting class is a Big Project.  But it would also be great fun, and would teach me a lot about fabric design.  I wish I had enough to spend a day playing with dyeing yardage!  But I only have one yard of suitable cotton fabric on hand right now, which is Not Enough.  Sadness.  I am half-tempted to run up to Dharma Trading Company tomorrow, to get more.
  • Make the first set of quilt blocks for my foundation piecing class.  (This may get put off to next week.)
  • Drape a second muslin on my dress form, for practice.

I haven’t put together a schedule for this stuff yet because I haven’t really solidified plans in my mind.  Maybe that’s not a bad thing – this is supposed to be unstructured play, not a planned project!  I guess my inner project manager is trying to organize things again.  🙂

No pretty pictures today, but LOTS of them tomorrow, I promise!

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, surface design

Previous post: Thermofax triumph!
Next post: Dyers’ dreams

Comments

  1. Julie L. says

    March 3, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    If you’re not deeply committed to printing out quilting-class quantities of fabric on your own, Spoonflower does custom-printed yardage. I don’t know what their turnaround time is like, though.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.