Tracy McCabe Stewart - Contemporary Fiber

"Cave Series VII" (C) 2010 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

I know it’s been a while.  I have been busy with non-art stuff for a while and haven’t had much that really seemed worth writing about. 

I just completed the piece shown above.  It’s another piece in my cave series; all are based on the incredible images found on the cave walls of Altamira (Spain), Lascaux (France) and chauvet (France).  As much as I work with these images, they never cease to thrill me.  I have another piece on the boards, so it will be a lot less time before the next post!

I know I haven’t posted in ages.  I’ve been absorbed in revamping my garden.  I downsized my big pond to a smaller one that requires less upkeep.  It involved moving tons of flagstone in the summer heat.  I wasn’t really feeling too creative afterwards. 

I fished this dragonfly out of the pond and he seemed quite content to dry off on my fingertip:

My Pet Dragonfly

Here’s a shot of the new pond.  I dismantled the waterfall, but have water bubbling through this millstone:

New Pond (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Three of these cute green frogs moved in the new pond.  So far, my big frogs haven’t returned.  This guy likes to hide in my lotus plant:

Green Frog with a Personal Umbrella

Here’s a couple of shots of parts of my garden.  I have gone heavy on the grasses and shrubs because my Great Dane and other big mutt mow down anything much daintier:

Tiger Eye Sumac, Hibiscus and Grasses (C) Tracy McCabe Stewart

and here’s more grasses in front of my garden shed:

Garden Shed (C) Tracy McCabe Stewart

and a shot of my old pond:

Fish! (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

and I did manage to put multiple layers of screening on my latest piece.  It combines both regular and metallic paints:

Screened Layers (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Here it is with hand dyed silk organza over it.  I like the look; a bit more subtle:

Okay, the rescue wasn’t really all that dramatic.  I did a bit of vat dyeing today.  When I came down to the basement, I had some little toads staring at me through the window wells.  we’ve had rain of biblical proportions the past few weeks and these little guys got washed through the grates.  It seems to happen every time we have really heavy rains here.

Toads!

I finally used a great silk screen that I made at a workshop with the fabulous  Barbara Schneider (I love her workshops!).  The effect was made by dribbling the design goop and letting it drip.  I love the effect.  Here it is on some hand dyed fabric.  I’ll be using this for my latest cave piece:

dribble screened vat dye

and here’s a scarf I screened vat dye on while I was at it:

vat dyed scarf

It’s all one screen, but different colors.

Another layer tomorrow!

Cave screen:As you may have noticed, I haven’t gotten a heck of a lot done in the art department over the last few months.  I did revisit a whooping crane piece I’d started before leaving for my trip to Japan, but wasn’t really engaged enough to stick with it when design problems arose.  It is currently in pieces waiting for me to get interested again.

I noticed, over the past few days, that when I thought about starting or working on one of my bird pieces, I’d start drifting away.  Suddenly, any thing else was more interesting:  laundry, walking the dogs, solitaire, you name it.  Interestingly, when I thought about doing some work on my cave series, I began designing and working the logistics of the piece out in my head.  I guess I need a break from the birds for a while.

I began working out fabrics and creating new thermofax screens to use in the piece last night.  I haven’t decided whether this will be a pure fiber piece or a piece that combines fiber and etched copper like my Lascaux pieces:  Horses and Bulls I and II. 

Anyway, here are some of the new screens I made based on the cave paintings in Altimira, Spain and Lascaux and Chauvet, France.

I am going to try to get some screening done over the weekend.  We are getting house stuff done next week (carpeting).  I need to empty out all of our furniture for the job and move it all back again when they are through.  It will be completely chaotic here for most of the week. 

Have a great weekend!

Here are the scarves I started a few days ago.  I will bring them all to Japan and let my daughter choose the one that I give to my daughter’s host mother.  I posted about this yesterday here.

I thought the scarves needed another layer of vat dye, so I screened an indigo and grey mixture over them.  I got better haloes today, too.  I think this one below is my favorite.  There’s a real hot spot from my camera’s flash.  The color is much more even:

Procion MX and vat dyed scarf by Tracy McCabe Stewart

 Here’s the second scarf:

Tree screened scarf by Tracy McCabe Stewart

The final scarf turned out all right, but the new screeend flowers turned out really blurry.  It was all the same vat dye, so I don’t know what happened.  I like the look of it anyway:

Procion and Vat dyed Scarf by Tracy McCabe Stewart

I am headed out for a 10 day trip to Japan this Wednesday.  My daughter has been finishing her last year of university in Kobe and staying with a host family there.  she has a minor in Asian studies. 

Big in Japan is a fun song from the 80′s by Alphaville.  It’s one of the worst music videos ever; complete with Robin Hood sort of outfits that don’t really have much to do with Japan, as far as I can see.  See it here.   We hum it around here because I am 6’2″ and going to the land of 5′ people.  I’m guessing I won’t exactly blend in. 

Right now, I am trying to get gifts together for Ashley’s host  family.  The Japanese have a somewhat complicated ritual of gift giving.  Here’s what I know:  gifts from/related to your geographical location are appreciated.  The presentation is really important, too.  I will wrap my presents in hand dyed fabric to try to make them extra special.  

I am from Chicago, so I am bringing them a book on Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.  I am also making a hand dyed scarf for my daughter’s host mother.   Apparently she wears very plain, dark clothing, so I am trying to do something pretty subdued.  I started by dyeing silk scarves blue grey and screened them with vat dye solution.  Here are the results form the vat dyeing.  They will probably get a layer of fabric paint before they are complete. 

Here’s a picture.  I am having a hard time getting the colors true because the silk is so reflective.  I barely got any haloing on these-too bad.  She wants plain, so I won’t add another design layer, but may screen some paint to make the effect more monochromatic.  

Hand Dyed Scarves by Tracy McCabe Stewart

I just can’t get enough of taking classes from Barbara Schneider.  She’s a fabulous teacher and I always learn something that I’ll actually use in my work.  This class was no exception.  The focus of Barbara’s class was on expanding uses for thermofax screens and silk screens.

We started out by making oversized thermofax screens.  You’re only limited by the width of the machine, but can make them as long as you care to.  We created frames by cutting one side out of two frames and gluing them together for a larger total opening.  I made some great screens but forgot to take pictures of them.

Barbara also showed us some of her experiments with screens past their prime.  Below, she has created a sewing line to add visual interest.  Good for backgrounds.

Revamping spent screensHere are some of her results using this screen:She also showed us some different effects to create with regular screens:Thermofax screens using a sponge application

Combination of sponge and regular applications

Cheap silk screens

wax resist on silk screen

 She also showed us another method using leaves or other objects (they will get ruined) as a resist and spray painting the screen.  You then remove the objects befor the paint adheres them to the screen.

Leaf resist screens

I had to leave the workshop early, so didn’t actually make any work.  That’s also why there’s no pictures of actual work.

I haven’t had any time to play with this stuff. I have been hunkered down working on a that huge heron piece I started a few months ago.  It’s basically done, but I’m not quite pleased with the head of one of them.  Once I fix it, I’ll post pictures. 

With all of this vat dyeing I’m doing lately, I probably should have started by posting an introduction to the process and some instructions for doing it.  Better late than never

By the way, There isn’t any vat in vat dye.  Don’t ask me why it’s called vat dyeing, I didn’t name it   Actually, I think the name came from indigo dyeing techniques which are the same type of dye.  Don’t quote me on that, I may have made it up.

Here are the basics general info-almost all of which is information I got from Barbara Schneider’s  fantastic workshop: 

• Vat dyeing is a really old technique (18th century)
• It is the most light fast dye. 
• Vat dyes are a specific type of dye rather than a dye process:  they are water insoluble in pigment form.  They are made water soluble-or able to bond with the fiber molecule- by adding a reducing agent.  The reducing agent used in my experiments is Formusol.
• Once vat dyes are mixed they will last forever
• The reason for the halo effect is that the discharge agents move faster than the dye agents
• Increasing glycerine increases the haloing effect.  Other liquids need to be reduced accordingly.
• The dyes we use(d) are Aljo Zymo-Fast (Vat Dyes).  Barbara does NOT use their recipe or directions.
• Vat dye colors will not blend with previously dyed fabrics, but will blend with each other.

Equipment:

In order to vat dye, you need to steam the fabric.  For this, I bought a huge tamale pot on ebay.  It gives me plenty of room to add the fabric without it touching the sides of the pot. and has a steam tray built in that keeps the fabric out of the water while still being steamed. 

Humongo tamale pot

Humongo pot’s steamer tray:

I also purchased a 1500 watt hot plate so I could do my steaming out in the garage.  Formusol is formaldehyde based and releases fumes during steaming and application.  Do your process in a well ventilated area and/or wear a ventilator.

Within the pot, you want a few layers of craft felt and 3 layers of paper to sandwich the material.  Make them about 2″ smaller than the pot so steam can circulate. 

Brown craft paper layer:

 The layers go from top to bottom like this:  steamer tray/paper layers/craft felt/rolled fabric/paper layers/craft felt and then a larger couple of layers of craft felt under the lid of the pot.  Like this:

 Once you have applied the vat dye by screening, stamping, etc.  Let it dry.  You then want to roll it loosely inside an old piece of fabric (a sheet works well).  See my last post for exceptions to this arrangement.  Wait until the water in the steamer is fully steaming and then arrange the layers as described above.  Steam the fabric for 15 minutes.

After the 15 minutes, remove the fabric and give it a good spritz with a plant mister.  Leave it for half an hour before rinsing and washing it.  This allows the halo effect to continue.

I then rinse my fabric out a bit with water and then pop it into the washer with some Synthrapol.

Vat dyeing can be repeated with additional layers.

Fine Art of Fiber starts tomorrow!

Yesterday was the first chance that I have had to experiment with the vat dyes that we made up at Barbara Schneider’s fabulous workshop.  I have more batches steaming as I write this, but here are my results from yesterday.  My results are really unpredictable.  I think I’ll be at this for quite a while before I can get results I expect with any consistency.  I dyed hand dyed cottons, silk organza and silk charmeuse.  All had been previously dyed with Procion MX dyes. 

The most disapointing results were on my silk organza.  I discharged beautifully, but didn’t lay down any new color whatsoever, despite having used 3 different colors.  I have a few more pieces in the steamer right now to see if this is a consistent result.  Here’s yesterday’s offering:

Procion MX dyed silk organza screened with vat dyes

 The silk charmeuse had mixed results; both scarves had good color, but one haloed quite a bit more than the other.  I am wondering whether this is a function of where it is in the steamer.  The materials are rolled up and set in the steamer; maybe the proximity to the outside of the roll has an effect.  I’ll try to experiment more with this.  Here’s the first scarf.  The color is great, but not much haloing:

Here’s the other one with better haloing.  The the sky blue came out as yellow:

the cotton haloed the best, but I had a strange color reaction with the sky blue turning yellowish and blurring:

hand dyed cotton screened with vat dye

More experiment postings tomorrow!

Hi all,

I missed the first day of Laura’s workshop because my trusty bug decided to blow it’s water pump while driving home from my guild meeting on Tuesday.  I had no idea what I was walking into the second day, so just brought some pieces in progress and figured that I could just enjoy the company of the group if they were already too immersed in work from the day before.  I did end up working on a new heron piece for a good portion of the day, but was around for instruction for a great 3D technique of Laura’s.

The technique involves embedding mixed media materials in a glue and water suspension.  It gives you the option of creating 2 sided materials and create sheer areas within the piece.  The material can be sewn, too.

You start by laying cling film in a sided cookie sheet and layering different materials over it.

Mixed Media Technique

Above, Laura has layered handmade paper, silk roving, skeleton leaves and material.

More materials are added

 when the desired density of materials are layered, Laura covers the composition with a 50/50 mixture of Elmer’s glue and water.

Laura covers the composition with glue mixture

Here are some of Laura’s sample compositions.  I love this one with embedded sticks:

One of Laura's finished compositions

The above piece has everything form dollar store fake flowers to used tea bags embedded in it.

Here’s the back:

the back of the same composition

Laura has cut windows and sewed around them.

Here are some more samples:

One of Laura's samples with lots of silk or wool roving in it

and another:

lots of wool roving on this one, too

I had a great time learning this new technique, but Laura’s real gift is in one on one coaching.  She is so good at helping people find their artistic voice.  This is the second time I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura and once again she had some great advice about the pieces I was working on.  If you have the chance to take a class with her, grab it!