Excellent topic Judy, I have nothing to add to it but will be watching with interest.

Beautiful Brixter, love them all!

If you hadn't seen white in those areas prior to washout I'd say that it is what we refer to as haloing.  Was that a red or a purple?  It looks very much like the turquoise bleed from blue-violet when using dry fabric.

You might want to check with tandy leather, they have a couple of styles that are suitable though I prefer one over the other, but you'll save a little and they occasionally have nice sales on sinew.

Well I guess that I'll admit that I got a 13 and was embarrassed by it, seeing as how I make my living working with colors...and I went back to it a few times, allowing my eyes a bit of time to recuperate before going back to finish.  Glad you enjoyed it, I thought it would be a fun one for dyers.

This is pretty neat. http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

Put the colors in order...warning, I found that it became very hard to look at after a while.  At this point I'm taking a break to go back in a bit, just can't actually see it well enough to finish.

Found a rather interesting article about US soda ash companies, the recession and competition from China.  I hope it's not misplaced on this forum, posting because it's something many of us use and thought it might be of interest.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Soda-ash-industry-fights-apf-2836058485.html?x=0

hey, nice approach, love it!

Oh Judy, were it not for the call of a salesman...got a call from a guy and he sent me a lovely box of samples.  He carries all kinds of tie-dye goodies, one that he was really excited about that he called "tiedye cord" which is a lot like kite string (if I'm remembering which is which in these samples) but not flimsy.  So I'm gonna post up the link, maybe it will help make his call to me worthwhile because I haven't needed supplies since he sent the samples though I do intend to call him when I am in need. 

http://textilebrokersco.com/

I'm a pretty hardcore sinew convert.  LOVE it!    But I only use it on dry soda soaked material.  I use rubber bands on wet ashed.  It's really all about the technique at play.  I find the sinew invaluable for small details like the eyes and smile on a smiley face.  In the beginning I was handwaxing hemp thread and that was a pain, so finding out about artificial sinew really changed my approach to the whole thing.  That said, I will admit to not ever trying dental floss, sounds difficult for the way I do things, tiny and expensive!  I do have a roll of a waxed linen that I plan to play with when time permits.  It is thicker than floss, thinner than sinew.  In the end I figure it's all about technique and desired result.

hey Jaja!  Forgive the lack of response please, I've been in a busy place (kids to airports and all kinds of goodies) but I am in.  Determined to fit some kind of creative approach to a piece in the near future, I hope others join in as well.

So thanks for starting this and I'm looking forward to the fun, I will join in ASAP.

Hey Jaja, thanks!  Really, it's very nice that everyone is so appreciative of the shirt AND I do think it's a cool looking shirt.

It just presented some issues that I thought we could learn from, thus my critique...I admit to being a bit of a perfectionist, with this shirt I had a goal that was not met.

I like your idea but suggest that we open it up to presentation upon whim rather than lining up simply because I personally would hate to have the pressure of an expectation and then let the group down.

I've never seen that dvd, I should see if they have it at the library.

The important thing, first and foremost was that I forgot about the fact that I use twice as much dye when mixing purple, blue and green than I do when mixing yellow, orange and red.  That played heavily into the jump.  I also gave no thought to the haloing effect.  I often use it to my advantage but in this, halo was not handled correctly thus the turquoise bleed out that you see.

I'm tempted to offer to put the bigger image up on for anyone who wants to close up on it in a browser window.  LMK if that's of interest.

Black over is really a neat technique and the funny thing (at least to me) is that it's almost scary when you start using it but it's really nice for adding depth to design.  As for "perfection", in ideal, there would be no white on that shirt, you can see a spot where I didn't use enough dye and that one is glaring to me.  The other thing was that I wanted smoother color transition from purple to green.  IMO, if the whole shirt had what the yellow to red has it would really be sweet.


This is where it gets frustrating.  My camera is broken and I thought I'd have my son take pictures of the process as I explained with visual aids.  Ugh.  He picked up the camera today to take a picture of the fresh sour dough and found his broken.  I'm feeling photo cursed.

Here's the basic gig.  Lay out the prepped (in this case washed, ashed and dried) shirt (or other fabric item) smoothly and then grab it at the shoulder.  Then grab the base of the shirt on the opposite corner.  Pull it out and smooth the other loose fabric downwards as well.  From there it is tied.  I secure, pull smooth, always remembering to straighten from that bottom corner to keep it on track in that direction and secure a little ways down.  After the entire shirt was secured I cut the sections in half by securing those midpoints.  In the end it had 66 sections so I had a nice number of them to move from color to color.  And then came the dye.  I really went about it in a kind of hit or miss way.  I mixed my standard rainbow and mixed small bottles of half and half colors (half yellow/orange, half orange/red etc).  To be honest I had my son helping and we did a lot of mixing as we went, not all half bottles were prepped in advance but for sake of explanation I headed off with that implication.  Basically I applied...yellow, yellow with a little squirt of orange, that bottle with a squirt more orange up til I was at half and half.  Then I added orange with each segment until I was at full orange.  Works very well on that end of the spectrum and I'll say more about that later.  After the whole shirt was rainbowed I squirted black all over it.  And actually...(yes, I know, this is me and how I do it) umm it was 8am after staying up all night.  The order was thrown at me at 10pm with a deadline that required immediate action and I had no shirts even ashed so it all started with a load in the washer (it was also not the only shirt ordered).  So it was 8am and we were both getting pretty goofy.  When it came to black over my son handed me the bottle and as I applied it...it looked kind of wrong.  It looked kind of wrong because it was navy and he'd handed me the wrong bottle.  I finished the navy over and then did black over that guessing that it would end up with a green cast over the entire thing, but apparently it was all good   (isn't it nice when THAT happens?)

It took a fair amount of time to tie and is secured with artificial sinew.  The "package" was very long and unwieldy, about 2 and a half to three feet, the shirt size L (fwiw).  And thank you to both you and Deb.  It was nice to do something a little different, this guy had another custom order that isn't photographed yet.  At anyrate, what I really wanted was smoother transition through the colors but I forgot an important thing...(and that's all I'm gonna say for now).