Sprinkle Dyeing and Sun Printing at VISA, Victoria

During a Mark Makers' summer residency at the Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA) 

 we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and have a dyeing day outside.

We set up tables and brought out buckets of water to the backyard of the school.

I set up my sophisticated system for working with dye powder safely and gave a quick demo on how to fill salt shaker-type containers with dye powder.

While the air was still we explored different sprinkle dye techniques using Procion MX. 

Wet soda-soaked natural fabrics were folded, rolled and scrunched before sprinkling dye powder over them.

Eileen sprinkles dye on flat fabric.

Brenda sprinkles dye on a linen fabric already cut to shape for a garment.

This is a great way to use up old batches of dye powder. It works best with dyes made up from a mix of colours. The different colours separate out and migrate through the damp fabric at different rates.

After lunch, Dale gave us a demo of sun printing using transparent fabric paints on damp cloth. She showed us how many different resists will work to leave an impression.

With the sun overhead, we all got clear impressions of the resists. Brenda is using plastic shapes she has cut out and leaves as a resist on linen fabric she has painted with fabric paint. Others used flowers, grasses, bubble wrap, paper and cotton doilies as resisits. 

The dyed cloth was covered with plastic and taken home to batch before being rinsed and ironed.