I am in Eugene at the Eugene Textile Center, taking a dye workshop from Judy Robertson. I have long coveted her fabrics  and when I first bought them, I was afraid to cut into them. We are using her methods on a variety of fabrics and are learning how to do her 5 signature dye techniques – color burst, star burst, nature, stripe and texture. In this photo, she is holding one of her fabrics that I bought and used in my Red Sky at Night.

Today we did color burst.

After sewing tyvek labels to our fabrics and soaking them in soda ash, we mixed up dye with urea water. To start, Judy mixed lemon yellow, fuchsia, turquoise and golden yellow. The base fabric is spread out on a sheet of plastic. I call this piece, the mother fabric because it will be used to produce several new pieces.

Then dye is poured over the fabric, leaving white spaces in between.

Then, she poured on some urea water to wet everything. Now, soda ash soaked fabric is placed on top and smoothed and smushed to bring dye on to the surface. You can see the result up at the top.

The fabric is then stuffed in a plastic cup and she spooned on some golden yellow and gave it a little more of a smoosh.

I used spring green, fuchsia, and something else (I forget!) I then poured some black across it. I should have taken more photos. But,  here is my first pull.

Here are all my cups of fabric which are batching overnight. I get to wash them out tomorrow.

Everyone in the class did a different colorway and we around the room creating pieces from them.

Anyway, it was lots of fun and I am looking forward to more fun tomorrow. We are starting with starbursts.