Some good results, some not so good

Last weekend I took a bunch of older fabric--some that I had inherited when my mother died, and washed it all, then overdyed with dark colors so I can use them for quilt backs.  Some of the pieces are at least 2 yards, so I didn't want to waste it, but I knew I'd never use them "as is".

No pictures of the finished pieces, but now they are dark brown, navy blue, and a deep purple color. 

And I made up some sodium alginate resist paste, and used this plastic sink protector to "smoosh" the paste through, then let it dry.  It took almost 3 days for it to dry, probably because it's been kind of humid here. 

 

 When it finally dried, I used some of the sodium alginate paste and added tangerine dye and soda ash to it, covered with plastic and left it overnight.  This is what I ended up with in the morning after rinsing-- 

Also, I took a silkscreen that I had made last year, and added stripes to it with blue painter's tape.  Then I took more SA paste, added color to it, and used the thickened dye mixture to print with.

This is how it turned out on a previously painted piece I had. The color seems to have faded out, I think because I soaked it in soda ash before printing, and maybe the soda ash is too caustic for the paint?

This was done on a white piece of fabric that was first soaked with soda ash, then overdyed with grape colored dye.  The colors are a lot more vibrant. 

I used another screen to make a "squares" design, then over dyed it with either chartreuse or green, I can't remember now.  I'm really not sure how all of this red appeared on my finished piece, I wasn't even using anything with red in it that day!

So I have lots of usable fabric now, some large pieces for backings that I hope to get basted this weekend, some smaller pieces for another quilt I want to get working on, and some other pieces that will have to be re-dyed because they didn't turn out so well.  Working full-time just interrupts what I really want to be doing...