Wednesday, October 17, 2007

More Maki Age

Still working on the finishing of my first Maki Age experiment so in the meantime

I decided to try some more discharge experiments using the Maki Age technique. This time I chose a denim twill to work on it is a very dark blue and appears to be 100% cotton (I often buy mystery fabric at the local fabric store) I'm planning to discharge the color and then to re-wrap the resist and go back in with an over dye, lets see how this works out...

I've decided on a branch pattern

Here is the starting pattern stitched:
And pulled,

OK first problem with the plan, this fabric is thick and when pulled my shapes are actually too small to be wrapped effectively, so rather than take the entire thing out I will discharge it and see where I land. I ended up using a 10 bleach to 1 water solution which is really strong, but I wasn't getting much out of a weaker solution, and I left it in for about a 1/2 hour keeping an eye on it and mushing it around a couple of times...

I actually like what I've got here and I want to add some medium range tones back into the piece using actual Maki Age. In order to do this I will need to make the shapes larger so I can wrap them. I'm stitching back into the design following these lines:

Then it is wrapped in a waxed cord:

and submerged in a Procion Fiber reactive dye solution (warm grey color) for 1/2 hour, taken out, left for another 1/2 hour or so and washed out.
Here is the end result:

I really like the look of it. I was trying for a thicket sort of look and I think I achieved it, the addition of the mid tone created a nice sense of depth and added some complexity to the color which you can see in this detail:

The end result isn't very traditional but I really like the effect. I think I got to the place I wanted to go in the end.

6 comments:

verobirdie said...

Very interesting! Thank you for sharing this step by step with us.

Anonymous said...

once you pull up all the threads it all looks so confusing doesn't it?

alsokaizen said...

Verobirdie, Thanks for commenting, I'm glad you enjoyed this, It's fun to try to describe both the process and the thoughts behind it.
Glennis, I really like that aspect of the process, that transition from order to chaos and back to order(hopefully!)is sort of an act of faith :)

Susie said...

Lovely work. Found this May 1 2009, Love it - are you still blogging? Doing more of this?

Susie

alsokaizen said...

Thanks Susie
I am still blogging and doing shibori sometimes Makiage sometimes other kinds the blog is
http://kaizenjourney.blogspot.com/
come see!

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed your piece and the process. On this eve 12/20/12!
Linda