I have lost count of the number of days in voluntary quarantine. I think that it's no longer worth counting them because unfortunately, this seems to be lasting for a long time.
In any case, we need to stay active, busy and in good spirits. Whether it's reading a good book, learning a new language, like my brother Marcelo does, painting, sewing, preparing delicious recipes or experimenting with new projects.
Most important, being responsible and staying at home limiting our interpersonal contact.
Fortunately, all this will pass and we'd grown and learned to appreciate the value of health and life.
I want to share with you my latest project on white cotton fabric.
Using Michel Garcia's recipe I prepared the resist clay paste to dye with indigo. The formula is quite simple, a mixture of 10 grams of magnesium salts, 20 grams of gum arabic, 30 grams of clay, all dissolved in 100 ml of water.
Once a consistent paste is achieved, the fabric is painted with it, wait to be dry and immerse into the indigo vat. In Japan, a resist paste is made from rice flour (katazome), in other regions like Bali clay paste is used to resist the indigo.
The resist clay paste could only be submerged a single time in the indigo vat because it begins to come off. You can only soak the fabric in the indigo vat for a minute, oxidize the indigo, and carefully wash the fabric to remove the resist clay and loose indigo pigments.
Before painting the fabric with clay, I drew by hand botanical motifs that I covered with the resist clay paste. Actually, it is not necessary to do this, since you can directly paint the desired design with the resist clay paste onto the fabric. This paste will prevent indigo from staining the fabric.
Final result, I hope you liked them.
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