Cathi's summer art camp - part 1

WOW...... what a fun-filled day of fabric play at "Cathi's summer art camp" Last Saturday, me and 3 of my bff''s spent the day at bff Cathi's house where she hosted an awesome day of creative play.
We have been trying to plan this day for months and it finally came to fruition. Cathi had her large cutting table all set to go and we protected it with a large canvas tarp she purchased. This is the before picture.....

We had numerous techniques we all wanted to try and we decided to begin the day with rust dyeing as it takes awhile to produce results.
We had all collected interesting rusty pieces.....

we also had a helper..... this is Clancy, Cathi's adorable dog. Maybe "helper" is a bit of a stretch, but he seemed to enjoy the day.

The technique of rust dyeing is simply arranging rusty items onto fabric that has been wet with ordinary vinegar. You then place it in a plastic bag to keep it from drying out and then it is left to stand. From what we had read it takes up to 24 hours for it to set in. We used old cookie sheets to arrange our rusty pieces onto, under, and around our fabrics. The rustier the better. We sprayed them with the vinegar and bagged them up and waited........

This is Cathi's rust composition, can't wait to see the results

This is one of Karen's compositions

This is one of my compositions, (I scrunched my fabric)

Karen also wrapped another piece around a rusty piece of rebar, and I wrapped a piece of fabric around a  large chain and those we put into a large ziploc bag to "stew".
Rust dyeing fabrics is a safe alternative to "powder" dyes although you are limited to rust for the final color. We did come out with some interesting pieces as I'll show you tomorrow........