Indigo Fabric

I made my Indigo pot last week and had a good time with it. I've always heard about Indigo forming a "Flower" on top which is where the concentrated Indigo was; I never knew what that meant.

 So here is the beginnings right after mixing;  I covered it to prevent oxygen from entering the mixture.  Oxygen weakens the strength of the Indigo.

 I let it set for hours, not knowing what I would find...and oh my....so that's a "flower". It looks like a concentration of bubbles on top.

 The "flower" must be removed and set aside (I used a styrofoam plate) until after you've finished dyeing and then it's returned to the pot.

 I was surprised at the short amount of time the fabric is in the dye solution - around 3-5 minutes and then it's removed.  You can see the greenish yellow color which immediately starts turning blue when exposed to the air.  That's the "bobbin piece" I'm holding - most anxious to see how that comes out.

 I hung them outside for a short time while still wrapped and then thought, maybe I should unwrap them so the air can get to every part.

 It was a bit tedious to get all the string off but also exciting to see the results right away.

 I didn't dye too much to start as I wanted to see how this panned out, but I was loving the results and depth of color.

 This was the silk organza which was folded and clamped, being so thin, the dye was able to penetrate through the layers.

 This was a silk chiffon that I scrunched with a rubber band. I love the results and probably the easiest one to do.

 This was a piece of deconstructive screen printed fabric where I used a triangle shape piece of plexi-glass to clamp in place.  I think I'm going to try more on already dyed fabric as the other colors showing through are nice.

 This was a piece of silk charmeuse. It originally had lots of white areas and tiny lines of dark blue - you can see the skinny darker lines.  I thought the white needed toning down, so I went back and dipped it for under 10 seconds...honestly...10 seconds and this is how intense the white areas got.

 The same thing happened with this piece of crepe de Chine. The circles were stark white so I dipped for a few seconds which darkened them a lot.

 This was a piece of silk broadcloth which I wrapped on a pvc pipe -  I liked the results

 This piece of rayon was wrapped using lots of old bobbins. It was time consuming but I love the results - probably my favorite.  I had no plan for spacing - just wherever!

 You can really see that it was a bobbin. Now I'm working on corks, lima beans and nail screws to see what happens...til next time.