I bought "Rice Seasoning" to dye with..

OK.  I went to the store and bought more "rice seasoning".  It has turmeric in it not saffron.  Turmeric also turns fabric yellow and is inexpensive.  That is a little easier to deal with.  I bought two packages.  One to experiment with and one to replace the one I used the first time before my husband finds out I´ve been doing mad experiments with our dinners again.  Today I don´t have time to experiment.  I have to study very hard for my test this week in Business Development class.  I also have to start planning, drawing and designing THREE garments for three different final projects.  I am going to maybe try to convince the teachers to let me make one garment and use it to account for the two final projects in two diffenent classes.  Then I would only have to make one really GOOD garment to cover the requirements of the two classes.  It wouldn´t necessarily be less work, because I would have to make one really awesome dress rather than two sort of nice ones.  Actually now that I think about it, maybe I am better off making two so-so garments.  Maybe a cool t-shirt or blouse for stamping and dyes class and a cocktail dress for indumentary design.  Then for Ergonomy I will probably make some work gloves for cleaning ladies.  It all may sound easy but it is not because I have to do all kinds of drawings and planning and cost control.  For Ergonomy I will have to find cleaning ladies who actually will use the gloves and then answer my survey questions. etc...  The sewing is the easy part.

I can´t figure out the magic fabric recipe.

I decided to do another experiment to get down the "magic fabric" recipe.  I can´t do it!  I stewed cotton fabric for hours yesterday in different combinations of tomatoes, wine and paprika and salt.  A few with vinegar.  These are all ingredients I remembered using that day but I can´t repeat the discovery!  I don´t know what I did the first time!  I think maybe I used some sort of premixed spices called "rice seasoning" too at one point.  Probably they had saffron.  But saffron is expensive, do I want to risk the investment for the sake of science?  I don´t even know where to begin a search on google for a magic fabric recipe.  I already tried "magic fabric" but that didn´t work.

The wine one sort of worked, but maybe I used a different brand of wine that day?  All I remember was that it was a red wine.  I don´t remember if it was merlot or cabernet.  I don´t even remember what brand it was.  But this time the fabric came out a sort of boring drab color, then when I washed it it turned grey.  The first time it was a beautiful deep, almost black after I washed it and then with each wash it turned sky blue.  Then it turned yellowy orange when I put vineagar on it and turned back to sky blue when I washed it in soap.

The tomato one just turned orange and when I washed it, it turned lighter orange.  About half an hour into my paprika, tomato, vineagar and wine mix my stepkids came home from school with varying comments about what smelled.  "Is THAT what we´re eating for dinner!?" "What stinks?"  "What the hell are you doing?" Surprisingly one of them actually said, "Mmmm what´s cooking? That smells good."  Then my husband "Do you know how many hours I have to drive in my taxicab to pay for your mad experiments?"

I did not do very well in high school chemistry, but I remember that in the labs they taught us to keep track of our experimental procedures in the labs and to use a control?  I am sick of tomatoes and wine.  I don´t even want to look at a plate of spaghetti for a few weeks.

I made MAGIC FABRIC!

I MADE MAGIC FABRIC!  For Stamping and Dyes class I had to dye four or more squares of white or natural cotton fabric with natural dyes. The dye could be anything natual.  So for example I could boil a square in beet juice, or carrot juice or dandelion flower juice.  Anything really.  I experimented on many squares in with different vegetables and fruits and spices and things.  The basic idea is that you simmer the element with salt, the fabric and the natural element in a pot of water.   I tried beets, carrots, avocado plant leaves, ashes from the barbecue, tomatoes (out of a can), red wine and combination of these.  After I simmered the squares in each element for an hour , I left them sitting in the elements for a day or two.  Then I rinsed them all out in cold water.  Here is what happened:

• The beets didn´t work at all.  The fabric came out a nice color but when I rinsed in cold water it all washed away and the fabric was exactly the same color as when I started.
• The carrots left only a very light hint of yellow.  Barely noticeable
• The avocado plant leaves worked ok, but the color was really icky.  Then I left it sitting in the ashes mix another day and it came out sort of brown, but kind of ugly.
• Ashes from the barbecue just looked like a dirty rag.

The Magic!  (Actually Eight Grade Chemistry Class)
The tomatoes and paprika looked a beautiful red-orange color and did NOT wash out with cold water.  I decided to wash it with soap to see if a garment dyed in tomatoes would be feasible.  As I washed it  everything turned PURPLE and then when I rinsed it turned a sunny YELLOW color!  I was a little disappointed but the yellow is a bright sunny yellow so I thought, that´s OK.  So then I decided to wash it in soap again (regular bar soap, it has to be basic, not PH neutral).  It turned PURPLE again!  When I rinsed it it turned back to yellow.  I kept washing and rinsing and the yellow color did not fade.  It is pretty steadfast and when you put bar soap on it the YELLOW changes to PURPLE (Will upload pictures to add to this post a little later)

A similar thing happened with the wine dye.  Except when I used soap on it it turned from a beautiful burgundy color to black.  As I continued to wash it turned a SKY BLUE. Then each time I washed in the soap it turned YELLOW and back to SKY BLUE! 

It is still working and it is days later now.  I suppose eventually the dye will wear out. I put one square in liquid bleach to see what would happen and the magic ended.  It all turned white and was back to "square one". I made a few more squared to experiment with and have also tried to find a way to get GREEN by mixing the two but I haven´t figured out the right quantities yet. The tomatoes keep winning over. I guess it needs only a teeny bit of tomato and a lot of wine to get GREEN.  Now I have left one soaking in isopropyl alcohol.  It stayed yellow.  I am wondering if that will stabilize the yellow so that it doesn´t change colors when I put soap on it.

This would be a fun experiment to try on your own or with your kids.  I also thought it would be neat to make a t-shirt or washcloths dyed this way.  It would definitely get reluctant kids to take their baths.

I have received a scholarship!

A kind person has offered to cover all the costs of my tuition! I am so thrilled by this new development!  For this reason I have decided to return the money to all my wonderful viewers who were able to lend me a hand. I truly appreciate your generousity but I would rather you use that money for something very worthy.  Or why not spend it on some nice fabric so that you can make great clothes for yourselves?  I hope you will do that and make sure to send in your videos for the virutal fashion show! 

Globalizaton and Clothes - Slave Labor Practices

The meeting with Juan Nieto went very well. He was hesitant about allowing my classmates and I to enter the factory and do our observations for Ergonomics class. But Vitnik is a company that is constantly supporting local charities and educational facilities and he kindly allowed us to use his factory for our project. The facilities are just beautiful! Huge spaces, high ceilings, modern equipment, plenty of natural light as well as artificial light so that the laborers can see what they are doing. Emergency medical services for all employees. In short, the city regulators would be hard pressed to find something inhumane or unsafe about the factory. When you think that in many clothing factories people are literally forced into slave labor it was quite a refreshing sight to visit Vitnik.
Unfortunately even buying from the big name brands is no guarantee you are not supporting slave labor. Here in Argentina a very common occurence is for the Bolivians and Peruvians to come to work. Independent sewing houses (who contract work from the big name brands) actually travel to those countries to recruit desperately poor people, promising them work in Argentina, for a "fee". Since obviously they don´t have the money for the "fee" they are told that they can work and pay the fee off in installments. When they get here (they are uneducated people who are not aware of their rights) they are literally forced into slave labor. Paid nothing, not allowed to leave the factory until the "fee" is payed off. Sleep, eat and work next to their sewing machines. No medical care in spite of extreme repetitive stress injuries. A few years ago a fire broke out in one of these slave factories, a family of six died, four of whom were minor-aged children.  It is common for single poor mothers, lured by the false promises of a better life , to be indebted not only with their own "fee" but that of the children.
This is the other extreme to Vitnik obviously and then there are different factories at different levels within the spectrum. The big name brands have had an "easy out" from responsibility, claiming that they "didn´t know" what their contractors were doing. But that is changing now that certain laws are holding them responsible for whom they contract their work to.
We as consumers also have a big role in this. We want lots of nice clothes at cheap prices. A responsible designer will consider the "human" factor when deciding to mass produce. A responsible consumer will learn to live with a little less and why not learn to make your own clothes?
Anyway, I don´t want to bore you with a long blog, be sure to do a search on google or some other search engines. Here is an interesting article Globalization and Clothes which touches upon the lesser known side of the fashion industry.

Thank YOU!

First I would like to thank the people who have donated to help me pay for my design school tuition. Every bit helps.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with the owner of Vitnik a well known sportswear manufacturer here in Argentina. For my Ergonomy class we must report upon our observations at a clothing factory. It is very interesting but very detailed work. We are to find areas where adjustments could be made to improve the quality of the work area for the laborers. In turn this meant to increase productivity by making the workplace more appealing and comfortable for the laborers. The main problem that clothing factory workers develop are problems in the articulations due to repetitive movement on the assembly line. Ergonomy is the science developed to avoid this and other health problems. All in the interest of creating a humane and productive factory.

My first week of classes.

I just finished my first three days of classes at the University and I feel so refreshed. It has been several months since my brain has felt active and challenged. My favorite class so far is Egonomics I think. It is the study of the human and his workplace surroundings. This can apply to his work tools, for example as in factory workers who perform repetitive movements throughout the day, as well as the safety of his work environment, his comfort level and many other aspects. The design or redesign of particular elements will benefit the worker. Ergonomic principles are used to develop higher productivity in employees. It is much more complicated than that of course but that is the gist of what I got from the first class. Clothing designers need to understand ergonomics not only for the eventuality that they will perhaps have a production line of garments someday, thus a factory full of workers. They also need to understand it so that the clothes they design will be comfortable to the wearer. There is a scientific system of measuring the human body, anthropometrics and the proportions and range of mobility of the human body change with age. The science of ergonomics was developed with the well being of the worker in mind (around WWI, when factory workers making military products developed debilitating conditions due to repetitive movements of their labor). Our first project will be to visit a clothing factory and do a report on the ergonomics of the workplace. I have also taken the Consumer Behavior class where we had to analyze some techniques used in advertising to consumers. The Stamping and Dying class was a color theory class. A little confusing since the primary colors in sustractive and additive colors are not what I learned in Kindergarten. I kind of don´t quite get it yet. I have a lot of reading to do!