my process, or why I was rejected by house beautiful

I want to document, and share my process.  I was contacted by house beautiful this week with the possibility of appearing in their fabric column, but when I told them I work in limited quantities they said they weren't interested because their readers need access to large amounts of fabric.  I want to show why produce individual lengths of fabric, usually about 5 yards each.  I really have a hard time exactly replicating things so every piece is unique.

It's hard to document everything!  Here is a start.

I print a tables length of linen, or cotton, or silk on a huge printing table my husband built for me.

I use small silk screens, and a yard stick to help place the screen.  This keeps the piece nice and loose, some people use much more precise registration.

The fabric gets rolled with the base cloth underneath it onto a tube and gets steamed for 15 minutes.
I forgot to take a picture.

Then it gets thrown in the dryer to dry, them the washer to get wet, and rinse off excess printing ink(dye) if desired.

Now the dyeing!  In this example I am trying to match the colors in this silk chiffon scarf, so I compare it to dyed samples,

I make an educated guess about which dye to use, and the amount, remembering I can always overdye it darker.  Lately I have been dyeing in buckets, which can easily hold 5, or even 10 yards of fabric.

There are 2 buckets because I have 2 lengths of fabric and I am experimenting with various amounts of salt and washing soda.


I got a beautiful color, but more blue than the color I was going for.

I have listed this on etsy, and dyed another length today, with 1/4 t sage and 1/4 t cayman instead of 1/2 t cayman.  I can post a picture of this tomorrow.

this gorgeous fabric is for sale here