Easy Shibori

Our last afternoon at the beach, we worked on Shibori using paint instead of dyes.  It's an easy way to achieve a really interesting affect. It's also a good way to rework your not so great fabrics. 

 We had some large pieces of PVC pipe which work better for wrapping fabric as you can avoid overlapping or repositioning.

 Kate gave me a beautiful piece of fabric she had made it using tea bags. I was hesitant to do anything with it;  it was so interesting in and of itself.

So I approached this piece with a light touch.  I used a heavy twine to wrap around - about 1 1/2" apart and knotted it at the top. I didn't wrap too tightly as that would make it difficult to scrunch up which was the next step.

 Mary used a piece of her wool which was a little harder to work with as it was heavier.

 But she was able to scrunch it for the next step.

 Kate used a piece of marbled fabric she wanted to rework and used rubber bands to wrap around instead of string.

 I had another piece of dyed fabric from years ago, now in Kates stash which she generously gave back to me - tied and ready to scrunch.

 We used a textile paint - Setacolor in both opaque and metallics

 and applied the paint using thin foam brushes. I tried to grab just the very top edge to have a thinner line. I also wanted the effect of trees.

 This was a piece Kate didn't like which turned out absolutely wonderful after doing the Shibori.

 It's now a garden and I can see a whole cloth art piece being done here.

  I think Mary might have had the winning piece...I don't remember how she did this except she used a foam brush and 2 different paints including a metallic. It turned out great.

 Both my pieces turned out to look like trees and I was really pleased with the results.

 It was really a fun and easy technique and great for working wonders for your "misfit fabric".

And of course our last evening - a beautiful sunset...the view at the end of the dock...
What a great way to try new techniques.

And it just keeps getting better

And the fun continues....the next day we worked on more ice dyeing in the morning, choosing a different color palette.

 I wanted to work in mustards and browns this time.

 I used a "4th" piece on top of the scrunched 3 pieces on the tray as it seemed to work out well the day before.

 We also did another "confetti" bucket. This time - lime green and navy - 2 great colors that should melt well together.

 And the results are in...

 and we're running out of room on the clothesline. Most of these are Kates and Mary's.

 Kate had another spectacular "bottom of the tray" piece - far right.

 I loved this piece and don't remember who it belongs to but it's very mottled and beautiful in person.

 This is probably my favorite piece. I'm always drawn to subtle colors. This was a re-do of one of Mary's pieces; it came out glorious.

 think I see a lot more of this in our future.......

 This one dyed in second go-round in browns and golds.... I took this picture at home. I'm loving the crystal effect.

 And this is my "confetti" bucket piece. They all turned out great using the navy and lime.

 In the afternoon it was on to easy "Shibori" with paint - stay tuned for more on that tomorrow.

The Results!

To continue from yesterday, we batched our fabrics overnight - outside where daytime temperatures were in the 90s and not much lower for nighttime. Were we surprised to find ice crystals on top the next morning when opening the bucket.

The bucket was used to layer the fabrics which went deeper but to have ice the next day was such a surprise.

Kate does a lot of landscape, seascape quilts and uses blues and greens often. She chose a beautiful palette for her fabric.  The middle piece (on top) was the fabric she put under the rack to catch the drippings - no ice was used.  We all loved it and were pleasantly surprised with the results.

Kates "clean-up" rag was on the end - right and that too turned out great - so smart to use a big piece as a clean-up.

These were mine, wish I had written down the colors but know I worked with plums and purples and blue - not my favorite palette but thought they would melt well together.  The far right was the 4th piece we laid on top and I added some green.

These were Mary's and she was adventurous to try fabrics other than white and cotton. I loved the one on the left but she decided to fill in the negative space and over-dye it in the next batch.

The piece on the right is a wool which Mary loves to work with and it's easy to bead. The one in the middle is a yellow print that Mary wound up over-dyeing with great results.

This is the results of our confetti pot where we used a pail and each of us had a layer....I was the middle and the colors very intense The right was the bottom and the left is light and also a wool or wool blend so that might have some bearing on why it's lighter than the others.  But it's subtle and I can see some beautiful bead work on top which I'm sure is going to happen.

It amazes me how different they all are, using the same color dye.

That night we ironed the fabric - and what a difference it makes.  I took more pictures when I got home and could put them on my design wall.

I love the crystal like effect that comes with this technique...will be doing this again.

Our evening treat was to go down by the ocean and walk along the beach...

What a way to end the day...

Perfect day, great results, lots of laughs and bubbly.

Stay tuned for more on our Shibori adventure...

Ice Dyeing at the Beach

I just got back from a wonderful get-away for some ice dyeing at Folly Beach. 

After we unpacked the car which could not fit another thing, we set up stations....one for the dyes

one for other extras

and our big table to hold our pans for dyeing.  I had some old marbling trays - AKA cat pans which seem to be a perfect size for so many things. We wet and scrunched our fabric to lay on top of a rack, ready for the ice.

We found many good tutorials online for doing this technique. One suggested we use crushed ice as it stays on top of the fabric without slipping off.  Kate happened to have this old but still working like a charm ice crusher.  It looked mighty familiar to me so I'm thinking I had one of those way back when.

After laying both crushed and whole ice cubes on top of our fabric....

we sprinkled with dye powder.  A small tea strainer seemed to work well, keeping the dyes from clumping and accumulating in one area. It was hard to know how much dye to use.

As the ice melted, the dye touched the fabric and reacted.  Since melting happened at different rates, there were some great effects.

Before covering, we added another piece of fabric on top...just to see what would happen.

Kate's was propped up on a higher wire allowing her to add a piece of fabric in the bottom to catch the drippings.

We thought it may have muddy results, but because the ice melted and dripped with the dye at different rates, it turned out beautiful.

We covered them with plastic and laid in the sun to batch.

We also did a bucket for confetti ice dyeing, each of use contributing a piece to each layer.  We stayed with the same 3 colors except to add a small amount of a 4th color on the top.

It was absolutely beautiful at Folly Beach - this is the view we had while working.

Doesn't get any better.

While taking a break, we tooled around in this fun little golf cart...

and ran into some other interesting passengers.
More to come.