
I've been slipping over to the studio as time permits to move my rainy winter experiments forward. Last weekend I brought up an indigo pot and dipped the stitched cloth packets in, first one end and then the other, for various lengths of time. This first one is the white linen piece I first dipped in pomegranate to see if wicking would work.

This is the little gray scrap I slap dashedly waxed to test the colors on gray.

This is the larger gray piece I waxed even faster to see how a wider piece could be handled.
The greens appeared where the indigo penetrated into the stitched packets. The blue was pretty, but too sweet and lively for the look in my head, so I re-dipped the blue ends of each into a pot of logwood gray. Then I took the wax out and washed everything pretty severely (hot water).

When I finished pressing them, I liked the colors much better, at least for the my current purposes. Look at the difference between the gray ends on the gray cloth and the white. I like both, but I'm pretty shocked at the value variation. The log gray did not wick very well compared to the pomegranate.

So, have these experiments revealed a process that will work? Will the colors look good and wintery with the dishes and undercloth? I pressed the wider cloth into a square roughly proportional to the larger piece I'm planning to make. I like it well enough to move forward on gray cloth. The raindrop/water marks need to be considered more carefully and rendered more graphically. I also think it will need a dark border if the colors come out similarly on the big square. We shall see. Next step: gray cloth into mordant.