In the Laboratory

By Jackie, July 8, 2009 8:29 am

So I can’t tell you about the project I’m working on right now but I can show you aspects of it that don’t give any secrets away. So for the last five days I’ve been in this little basement kitchen creating quite the mess.

It took me a little while to get going and remember how to do everything I learned last summer from the class I took. I had a poor first batch. It wasn’t pretty. Oh, I’m sure someone out there may have liked it but it wasn’t the deep jewel tone colors I was going for. Last summer I got deep, wonderful colors. Why not now? Because it’s frickin’ 60 degrees in July! I need the hot and humid summer weather. That’s where this old boy came in handy.

Yup, a microwave. My neighbor had given it to me last year. It’s old, but it works. It’s just small. But not to small for a zip-loc bag of fabric and dye. I wasn’t sure at first but I was a little desperate. I have a big monster of a deadline and can’t waste time or dye waiting for summer to arrive. So armed with couple cooking thermometers to check how hot things were getting in between beeps, I nuked everything. Especially since I was using turquoise dye which needs to get hotter than the other dyes to get more vivid colors, this actually worked out great. But I’ll let the fabric prove that.

I hung it all outside to dry to avoid the tangled, thready mess of the dryer. It kind of looked like gypsies moved in or something.

I also dyed some cotton batting. Why? Because I had some.

I also experimented with some old paper maps. They wanted to fall apart so I laid them out to dry for the night.

And just in case anyone was wondering. The garden is still growing. Growing some really big tomato plants, zucchini, cucumber and mosquitoes. I didn’t plan on the mosquitoes, they just arrived. Oh well.