Stitch a Day 2017, Day 53

Another day with few stitches, but progress nonetheless. The title of the project is Stitch a Day, and I definitely did more than one stitch!

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 52

Transitioning from the back to the front today. It's been slow going of late. The ikat is a scrap left over from shortening some pants.

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 51

It's been slow progress lately. So many projects. I'm not getting to my stitching until late at night, and then I'm usually tired and lazy and not getting many stitches done. But it's been something every day for 51 days, so that's something.

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 50

I was happy to find this scrap of a Japanese print inspired by Sashiko patterns. The color picks up the different rust tones of the indigo scrap below. At the top is a bit of screen printed canvas that was a failure, but cut up and overdyed one would never know.

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 49

The center of this section is a piece of rust dyed cotton that I overdyed with indigo. Below that is a piece of shibori folded cotton dipped in a different indigo vat. The rust dyed piece was dyed in the iron vat and the folded piece was done in a workshop using a pre-reduced indigo and a fructose vat. I wasn't very happy with the pre-reduced indigo. The color seemed a bit flat and despite 12 dips never got that rich deep indigo that I can get with just 5 or 6 dips in the iron vat. I think the pre-reduced indigo is the issue. I feel like I get about the same results with the iron vat as from the fructose vat. I prefer the iron vat because it's easier to maintain.

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 48

I just got a small bit done today, working in the same area as yesterday.

Stitch a Day 2017, Day 45

I found a nice bit of an indigo dyed block print twill from India that was the perfect weight to cover the pocket. It's sturdy enough that it will bear up to repeated rubbings. I think I'll add some more stitched in the other direction. 

The Importance of an Acid Rinse

This post will probably only interest dyers who use an iron indigo vat, or a 1-2-3 vat as Michel Garcia calls it.

The iron vat is a great one. It requires very little maintenance. The blues you can get are deep and rich. The vat stays at room temperature so you can use clay or rice resists without fear of them boiling away. The downside is that it's got a ph of about 11 and needs to be soaked in an acid bath to get the ph down. Iron is used as a mordant with vegetable dyes to "sadden" them. You can get gorgeous warm tones that are a bit drab and toned down. In the indigo vat this makes your whites a bit dingy, and your blues a bit dusty.

After 20 minutes in a pot of hot water (ideally boiling, but I'm often lazy) the whites are clear and the blues are keyed up and vibrant. And the rinse water, which started out clear, looks like this. I did 4 loads in the bucket today, so it's murkier than usual, but it's pretty remarkable that this came out of the dyed fabric that looked pretty white. The good thing is that you don't need to do the rinse immediately. As pieces come out of the vat I toss them in a basket and periodically take a sunny morning, like today, and have a rinse session. I use a white construction bucket, hottest tap water and a few shakes of citric acid. I test to be sure the ph is around 4 or 5, although you can tell if it's working by whether the rinse water takes on the iron color after a few minutes. Some things I'm very specific about weighing and measuring. When eyeballing works, I'm all for it.  I let the pieces soak in the acid rinsevfor about 20 minutes and then rinse them in clear water. S