Dyeing to meet ya - or how to become Na'avi in one easy lesson

So I thought I'd dye some fabric - and thought I'd use a paintbrush to apply the dye, rather than soak the fabric in beer cup dye pots, and also thought I wouldn't need gloves.....

...and you know what thought does to you - oh dear - after the dyeing session my husband asked me when I was joining the cast of Avatar on Pandora - I had blue dye everywhere - my hands, feet (I had flip flops on), forearms (I dye outside and the mozzies were fierce yesterday), down my pj's (because I didn't get dressed until much later in the day - and only then when we had a few friends drop in...) but I did have fun.

I was using the painting technique I thought I'd seen on Deborah's blog - but I've since found out that Deborah uses fabric paint and I used procion dyes and a large paintbrush - oh well, still loved the process - even though it was a bit messy.  I only mixed 2 colours, blue and black, and after 'painting', rinsing, drying and ironing, I have 8 FQ's of fabric ready for a new idea I have brewing...

This fq was used to wipe up all the dye on the table after I'd slopped it around a bit

For this effect, I splodged blue dye all over the FQ and then threw large salt crystals on the wet fabric - the salt protected areas of the fabric creating this mottled effect, which reminds me of whale shark skin

for this one, I painted stripes of blue and overpainted some with the black.  I then 'wiped' the brush between the stripes without reloading the dye

This one was 'striped' all over and black splodges added

For this one, I simply put dye all over the FQ, including a little of the black and the paler marks were created by the fabric lifting off the table

The remaining FQ's are more of the same.  I think I'll do another 8 using different colours - red/yellow maybe, or red/turquoise.....must get some more PFD fabric and soda ash....

In the meantime, my new Janome Horizon is having a bit of a spak attack with FMQing and I have a date with the Sewing centre I bought it from on Thursday - hopefully it will be sorted out and I can catch up with Laura's QAYGFMQQA asap...