Robert and the art cloth

Of which I only have pics of Robert so far. I sort of went off on a tangent with him after I got back from Vicksburg and had all my fabrics laid out together (translation: dumped into a pile on top of another pile on the table) and saw the blue and brown batiks playing so nicely together. I printed off the picture of Robert Johnson, after changing it to a sepia sort of color instead of the original gray/black tones. The lighter blue strip at the bottom will have tortoiseshell guitar picks and if I can buy some unattached tuning pegs they will wind up at the edge of the picture. A coil of rusty guitar strings (which reminds me I need to get out there and put the acid on them so they'll rust today) below the pic, then some quilting. I'm also considering "roughing up" the seam between the blue and brown by overlapping and lacing or something, instead of having the sharp line. We'll see. I have the patterns printed off for the next one, a Charlie "Bird" Parker piece, and the fabrics chosen and dyed for it. It's lying on the ironing board as we speak as I re-dye some rust stuff a bit darker to use with it.

The art cloth came out pretty well. A couple of pieces I absolutely love, a couple that I'm already using as wiping rags when I'm working on others. I really like the look of the shaving cream dyed pieces when they get done, but I'm obviously doing something wrong with the setting process since I'm losing most of the color once they're washed. The yard of gelatin plate printed fabric is going to be very hard to turn loose of, but maybe I'll get a couple more pieces made and will have a choice of which one to donate. This session of gelatin dying went much better than the last, and I'm actually happy with the result. I'll try to get a pic of that up sometime today. I'm also liking the effect of simply sprinkling dry Rit dye on the pieces as I'm doing something else to them. I need to add some salt filler to the shakers of dye though to control the amount a little better. A really pretty piece of rust dyed stuff with teal Rit dye will wind up in the Bird Parker piece. I also played with rust dying some colored fabric. I'll report back on that experiment once they dry and set and get washed. So far I like the effect though. They have more of an orange color too, since I dyed them in the rusty wheelbarrow.