sharolene – Fiber Artisans of San Jose

April 9, 2017 Meeting

Naturally dyed eggs — Ann, Phyllis, Sandy & Marcia looking on their handiwork.

IMG_20170409_153321 — Food Safe Dyed Eggs

This meeting was our pre-Easter one where we decorate eggs in some manner. This year, we decided to dye them with food dyes (as described below). We got a great bunch of colors that were mixed according to Martha Stewart’s instructions from her website. Attending the meeting were: Ann, Phyllis, Sandy, Marsha (pictured), Frank (taking the picture) and Sharolene.

The eggs we dyed were colored with beets, red cabbage, turmeric, onion skins and coffee. The pale ones are blue and lavender. The dark colors were boiled for 30 minutes and the light ones were raw eggs soaked in the dye for 30 minutes. The ones we consistently turned were scratched and the ones we left alone came out nicer. We all agreed that it was a lot of work and a fair amount of wasted food but we learned some interesting things. Next year we are using the colors we liked the best and designing the eggs with leaves and wrapping them with color: Hint to all, If you ever have an occasion to cook red cabbage put a couple of white eggs in the pot at the same time and see what a pretty color you get. Then you can eat them.

February 19, 2017 Meeting

We had a lovely small meeting with Phyllis, Marcia, Sandy, Lotus and Sharolene. Sandy tried the new method of heating up our indigo bath with an aquarium heater and pump, however it didn’t heat up the water fast enough for our purposes. Therefore we are purchasing an electric hot plate to boil water to pour around the indigo bath instead.

The meeting consisted of us working on our kumihimo lanyards for CNCH. Sandy showed us a very nice pattern that is easy to weave which makes large braids that will be easy on the neck of whomever wears it.

Meeting items:

photo of marudai — Sandy’s new marudai. 26″ tall, 10″ mirror

wp_20170219_12_08_01_pro — Sandy’s Friendship Blanket. She just finished crocheting the connections.

serendipity-members — Back Row: Roberta Gaynor, Marge Pustorino, Linda Stinchfield, Pat Martin, Chris Wallace, Carol Lewis Front Row: Marcia Kehr, Barbie Paulsen, Margaret More, Mary Flynn (Marge’s twin) , Phyllis Karsten.

Marge Pustorino – Mary Ann Ostrander
Margaret More – Four O’ Clock
Mary Flynn -Small Blooming Leaf
Rhonda Nelson – Snail Trail & Cat Paws
Chris Wallace – Sun Moon and Stars
Dee Dumont – Large Blooming Leaf
Marcia Kehr – Johann Speck #33
Barbie Paulson – Kings Flowers
Linda Stinchfield – Chariot Wheels
Phyllis Karsten – Phyllis’s Fancy
Patricia Martin – Snowballs
Carol Lewis – Morning Star
Roberta Gaynor – was not able to do the weaving

October 16th Meeting

We had a great, unexpectedly large number of members who showed at this meeting. We had an indigo pot and Sandy, Sharolene and Marcia did shibori folded indigo dyed shirts.

indigo, shibori — Sharolene’s shibori indigo dyed shirt.

March 20, 2016 – Egg Decoration

We had a fun meeting yesterday decorating eggs. Attendees were: Sandy, Marcia, Phyllis, Sharolene, Frank, Sage, Aviva, Ann, and Elaine. Sharolene tried some unsuccessful indigo dyeing on some mystery fabric, Aviva and Sage knitted, Sharolene and Sandy did egg decorating. Sandy dyed one egg in some older yellow dye, which worked fine, although the dye itself was not reusable any longer. Sharolene and Sandy experimented with a new to them method of dyeing eggs with fingernail polish. It was quite simple. The fingernail polish floated on the surface of room temperature water and the eggs laid on top and the polish stuck to the eggs in delightful ways. Ann used a silk transference technique where she tightly wrapped an egg with silk and then boiled in vinegar water for 30 minutes. This process transferred the dyes from the silk to the egg. Beautiful.

November 15, 2015 – Resist Dyeing on Eggs

These are wax resist eggs and are multiple dye dipped in several colors in between applying wax. We had a fun small meeting with regular members Frank, Sharolene, Sandy, Bambi, Phyllis & Marcia. Frank’s cousin Betsy, also had a good time painting eggs.

September 21, 2015 – Beginning Bookmaking

We met on an extremely hot day and met early to beat the heat. The subject for our September meeting was making covers for handmade paper notebooks. Frank Mikulastik was our fearless leader. Frank makes 40 pieces of handmade paper in his kitchen on Sunday afternoons! Frank is a good teacher and showed us how to size a cover for the size of the paper, told us what materials to use and showed us how to sew a signature into a cover. He is quite inspiring with his own indigo dyed notebook covers.

Sandy brought some leather that we cut for notebook covers. She was able to cut them to size with a metal ruler and a box cutter. She made them big enough for two signatures. It is a nice pliable soft leather and will be great for notebook covers.

Sharolene shared her madder dyed fiber that she dyed in the last few weeks, linen towel that she just pulled off the loom and cotton from the garden. The madder process was

Sharolene's Linen Kitchen Towel, just pulled from the loom. — Sharolene’s Linen Kitchen Towel, just pulled from the loom.

Madder from Phyllis' and Sharolene's garden were used to dye this yarn. — Madder from Phyllis’ and Sharolene’s garden were used to dye this yarn.

Sharolene's madder dyed fiber. Madder was dug from Phyllis' and Sharolene's gardens. — Sharolene’s madder dyed fiber. Madder was dug from Phyllis’ and Sharolene’s gardens.

Notebook made with handmade paper and store bought batik fabric cover.

Sandy making her handmade paper notebook.

The designs on the paper were from liquidized paper, squirted on after the paper was made.

Frank used a cut plastic bottle and poured liquid paper into it for the designs.

Attendees at meeting were: Phyllis, Frank, Sharolene, Sandy, Marsha and Carol Lewis (new member).

July 19, 2015 -Phyllis’s Medal and Overdyeing a Shawl

We had a fun meeting on July 19th, 2015 at the home of Phyllis Karsten. Phyllis just got back from the senior games and won a first place medal in her 90+ class. She just missed the world record by something like 40 seconds. Way to go Phyllis!

Sandy Kupper (left) and Phyllis Karsten (right). Photo of Phyllis at Senior Games 2015. Phyllis shown with her first place medal.

Sandy brought the extremely soft woolen shawl that Jean Shoe so expertly and lovingly made, like all her hand work. But we felt the colors were a little too bright for our tastes so Sandy did a quick indigo dip. It muted down the colors wonderfully. We were very happy with the results.

This was the bright knitted shawl before indigo dip.

WP_20150719_007 — Carol Lewis wearing the indigo dyed shawl.

May 17, 2015 – Shar’s Shibori Resist Cloth

Our indigo pot was strong and hearty. I brought cloth to dip into the pot and decided to put little rubber band resists all over the cloth to see what it would do. I did one, two and three rubber bands in different places. The three rubber band method turned out the best. Shown in the photos is the cloth after one dip with rubber bands still in and one after the indigo had oxidized. I was very happy with the results.

One long indigo dip of 20 minutes with rubber band resist.

Rubber band resist, indigo dye. One long dip of 20 minutes.

August 24, 2014 – Indigo Dye Summer Meeting

We had a wonderful indigo dye day today. Frank Mikulastic and Sandra Kupper had items to dye. We have been experimenting with shibori folding techniques and tried some new ideas today.

Frank started with white cotton fabric. He folded the fabric in the long direction and then folded it into a triangle bundle. He then wrapped rubber bands around the outside to hold it together in the dye bath.

He dipped it into the dye bath 5-6 times and the fabric got darker with each dip into the indigo. (With indigo, the best way to get a darkly dyed fabric is to do multiple dips, not with stronger dye.)

Sandy wrapped her fabric around a pvc pipe and tied it with string then dip dyed it about 3 times for a fantastic looking diagonal stripe.

She also dyed socks and a t-shirt – both had been unsuccessfully dyed once before with procion type dyes. Both items dyed beautifully this time.

Sharolene’s Spinning, Knitting and Weaving

I majored in fine art in college and studied color extensively. Water colored landscapes and flowers cover the walls of my home. This study of color has helped me in many ways throughout the years and has followed me into fiber arts. In 2004, a friend of mine got me interested in spinning. Not long after that, I bought a spinning wheel and the rest is history, as they say. Today I have 5 spinning wheels of different sizes, 4 looms and an attic full of fiber. I have a blog on Google’s blogger website (although I don’t keep it up regularly). If you’d like to see some of my past work, you can go here. (I shortened it here with TinyUrl). http://tinyurl.com/pvkogg6

Some photos of my recent work are here: