Fiber Junkies at Play

And play we did! We gathered at my house for a day of Indigo dyeing. The weather has been so rainy off and on everyday - we weren't quite sure what to expect, but as the saying goes "somebody up there likes us" and let the sun shine, shine, shine.  

I told everyone to bring rubber gloves, the ones that go up your arm. Denny took me literally - up to the shoulder - where does one find gloves like that?

The morning was spend folding, clamping and trying many kinds of resists on different natural fibers including vintage clothing and table linens, prints and old dyed bed sheets.

The vats were ready after a couple of hours when the flower appears (bubbles) and time for fun - dunking the fabric.

It only takes a few minutes to get deep color.

I'm always amazed at the yellow-green color when it first comes out of the dye. This is a good sign and shows the indigo is strong.

Kate brought some printed fabric she wanted to experiment with - it came out really nice.

We had some extensive pleating done with hand stitching which turned out beautiful (results in next post).

Even some old slides made a great resist.

Everything was hung to dry before removing the resists.

Some of the resists were tedious to remove like the tied and stitched ones, but worth the time when we saw the results - lots of ooohhing and ahhing.

More to come tomorrow. I must add that I love this technique but even more so when done with friends. It's so much fun to see what others come up with, fabric and resist choices and of course the wonderful results.