more rust

Another long weekend, what bliss! I stitched a Hallowe'en ornament from my first rust attempts. I basted around the pumpkin magnet I'd used and then quilted it with an outline stitch over some old prequilted calico I had. Then I folded the edges under and slip stitched it to a piece of black felt with a scalloped edge. I added a knot of orange floss in each scallop and a buttonholed hang tie. The flash made this a little brighter than the actual piece.

I also stitched a pulled thread ornament and did some other fun things I'll write about later on. Right now I'm all about the rust.

Saturday night I sat out in the grass in back of the garage, with gloves and a mask, and unrolled the rusty fabric. Here are some final pictures of the fabric before I unrolled it. The bottom of the container sure was sludgy.

I slowly unrolled the wire, wrapping it around a bottle to keep it for next time. Then as the sludge drained into coffee filters (to clear the water and also save that lovely rust for future use), I unrolled the fabric and picked off bits of rusty steel wool. Those went into a container to save, too. I rinsed out the box and then placed my semi-cleaned fabric in it and added clear water and rinsed it around.

It's a good thing coffee filters are cheap--the rust really clogs them up and I used quite a few filtering the container water and then the rinse water. I'm using quart-sized yogurt containers for filtering, rinsing and storage and I began layering a clean, dry filter with a rust clogged one as I went along. Later on I laid them out on a box top to dry.

I swished my fabric around in the rinse water and picked off more pieces of steel wool. I had wrapped two pieces of fabric on my tubing so I had multiple layers of copper wire and steel wool. After the first rinse I filtered the water and then rinsed the fabric again.

I took the whole mess inside then, to the utility tub, and thoroughly rinsed out the box, the water container, strainer and the fabric. Then I hung the fabric to dry. Taa-daa! These pictures are the first fabric, front and back. The fronts are a little different from the backs.

Here's the second fabric piece,
front and back.

I may try another batch and let it rust in the basement. Doing it outdoors is definitely a summer thing. I like that it took about a week to rust because that fits my schedule--set it up one week, rinse the next. It would go quicker in the heat of the summer.

I'm certainly noticing rust everywhere. We did some antiquing on Friday and I noticed I was hunting the shop for rusty objects--something I definitely would have bypassed in the past! Didn't see any this time.