Preparing to play

Finished up at the old job yesterday afternoon, exit interview complete. I’m free! For the next five days, I have no work obligations whatsoever.

So now it’s time to start playing! Today I plan to play with soy wax on dry fabric (pretreated with soda ash). I’ve divided 15 yards of fabric into 1-yard pieces and scoured the pieces; I’ve also mixed up nearly a gallon of print paste (a dye thickener). I plan to start by playing with plain soy wax on fabric, followed in short order by mixing dyes into the soy wax, a la Jane Dunnewold and Lisa Kerpoe’s book, Vibrant Color, which will color the fabric as well as providing a resist to further colors. I will probably also make soy wax crayons at the same time, and experiment with crayon rubbings, drawing with the crayons, and other ways of messing around with soy wax.

Tools I plan to use include stamps (home-carved of course), tjanting tools (a tool used to “write” on fabric with wax), and my tjap, which is an elaborate copper stamp designed for use with wax. They are expensive but beautiful tools – I bought mine on an impulse from Dharma Trading Company a few years back, but have yet to use it. (Surely a crime!) I have been dying to play with it for a few years now, but never found the time. Well, today’s the day!

But first I’m going to sew up a new muslin for the Phoenix Rising foundation garment. The sun isn’t up yet, so I won’t be able to see well enough to work outside. I should really have gone back to sleep, but I was way too excited!

Photos later, of course!