ELAINE QUEHL, Quilt Artist, Teacher, Dyer, Designer

Sunday, January 9, 2011

More Dye Happy 4, Flour Paste Resist

Sylvia Young just sent photos of her fabric that resulted after removing the flour paste resist. This one is my favorite. She says she used an "ugly" piece of fabric, and did her crackle pattern with an eggplant coloured dye.

What is a flour paste resist? Basically you mix up a paste of flour and water, and paint it on a piece of fabric that has been soaked in soda ash solution and hung to dry before the paste is added. The flour paste dries in about 24 hours to look like this:

Once the flour paste is dry, you take the fabric and scrunch it so it cracks, just as I am doing in this photo. I especially like this photo because it makes me look thinner than I actually am ... LOL :-))

After that you paint thickened dyes on top. The dye penetrates the cracks, so that when you wash the flour paste off you end up with a wonderful crackled pattern.
Sylvia's soy wax batik turned out great too:

as did her stitched Karamatsu shibori:

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