Indigo the next day....

I've had a few interuptions along the way....known as "life"...not complaining but so sorry to get back to this post so late. I had some time left on my Indigo pot...I can't get them to last as long as they're supposed to. The few days after the F Junkies were here, it rained like crazy so I couldn't do my Indigo.

I did have everything ready set to go and when the sun came out...I was outside like a flash. I do have a lot of "before and afters". It's fun to see how the resist affected the dyeing process. The above is corks wrapped with rubber bands.

Gosh...remember these...I used to actually sleep on these horrific things. I remember in college, setting my hair and wearing a big hat to cover them when I went to dinner in the dining hall as the rule was - no curlers allowed.

When I use them in the fabric, I intentionally crinkle up the fabric before putting the cap on the roller. First of all, it helps the curler to stay put with the extra bulk in there and it also makes for a more interesting design.

Pretty interesting and I would think most people could guess what made the design...especially the "curler generation"...like myself.

The above set of pictures are all the same fabric....photo of bottom 2 not true to the colors. I used a pink fabric printed with purple paint, wrapped in corked. I thought maybe having the paint on there would create a resist....and it does if you can see that in the photo.

I loved this next one - using old bobbins from a machine I don't have anymore. Not only did I wrap around the bobbin...

but also around the middle of the bobbin .....top right

for a very interesting effect.

The top left was folded around a PVC pipe and the right started with a colored fabric, folded and clamped, then dipped. 

I know I used marbles to wrap around and think the top left is an example...I can tell as it's more of a round shape in the middle.

The left is a scarf which needs more Indigo so it will have to be re-dipped...the right is the marble wrapped. I have to say, at the dollar store, I found the tiniest rubber bands...like 500 for a dollar...and they worked perfect for this type of thing...only need one wrap...maybe 2.

Here is some white silk I wanted to try...silk does work beautifully...

and some dyed fabric

and my studio assistant - Fraggle...He loves hanging out with people AND fabric!

The finished piece...I do like seeing the way Indigo works on colored fabric.

Here are some Lima beans I used a few years back...they took the color so well while wrapped inside the fabric, I decided to save them, shellac them and keep them on display...just too pretty not to. Now I'll have to think of some things to do with all this new pretty Indigo.

Folly Fun - pt. 1

So time for another Folly retreat with Kate and Mary - great fun! It's always a whirlwind packing and planning and deciding what to do...this time it's something we haven't played with very much - Indigo, wax and shibori along with some eco printing using some techniques we learned in a recent workshop - Wow, that's a lot to pack into 3 days.

My cat Fraggle wants to come and thinks he can hide in my tiny suitcase...Ha! He can barely fit..

Well, fast forward 5 hours and we are now at Kates beautiful place overlooking the water and getting ready to dive in (not the water,...... but our shibori). We had lots to use as resists including curlers, rubber bands, clamps, plexiglass, marbles and lima beans...Are you curious yet?

We used some new PFD mercerized cotton as well as silk and some "mistakes" we wanted to overdye. My husband had cut plexiglass into small rectangles we used to make a "sandwich with fabric folded in between and clamped tight (left). The piece on the right was rolled into a long snake, rubber banded and twisted.

This piece had been lightly rusted. I then used corks cut in half to tie into little bundles....I always knew that drinking wine would pay off someday.!

And old fashioned rollers...I wonder if anyone even uses these anymore.

After clamping with rollers, the fabric was bunched into a tighter bundle and held in place with rubber bands.

Another piece just squished and held with rubber bands...quick and easy.

The pot of Indigo ready to take our fabric. It's a very fast process with great results.

The first piece sandwiched between plexiglass becomes window panes.

Some more pieces hanging to dry including my rusted and indigo t shirt.

I had a piece of charmeuse silk I wanted to try wrapping around a pole. It was a fairly large piece and hard to manipulate.

I used a large PVC pipe and string which was wound around the silk and then scrunched up.

Our pot of indigo was not deep enough to accomodate the length of fabric so we had to gently pour the dye over the fabric at the top of the pipe.  It's important not to incorporate too much oxygen back into the  pot; it will weaken the indigo....Using slow and gentle movements helps. After it was in the pot (@ 10 mins) it was removed and laid on grass to watch it turn from a yellowish green to indigo.

And the results.

I used to teach a workshop in fabric dyeing and had made lots of samples....one of the techniques I taught was 3 color dyeing and this red, orange and yellow was pretty but quite bright.

I used screws as you might be able to tell in photo above this one, and wrapped the entire length of the screw with rubberbands.....creates a flower. The smaller rings (with not as much red showing) were created by wrapping marbles.

And more results and lots more to come so please come back and visit.

And a Few More

And just a few more to share from our dyeing adventure last week. A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to Radiance by Kaufman Fabrics - a blend of 55% cotton and 45% silk.  I had forgotten I had it and came upon it while we were preparing our fabric for dyeing. This fabric had not been washed ahead of time like the instructions suggested so I had no idea how it would react.

I wrapped it around marbles, only doing a small piece.

The interesting thing about this fabric was the "halo" around the resisted areas......It was a grayish color, not a lighter blue like you would think - really pretty and a surprise.

And the big old fashioned pink plastic hair rollers were used to resist areas of this fabric.  Seeing these rollers brought back memories of living in a college dorm, going to dinner with my hair in curlers and wearing a big wooly hat to cover them up (we couldn't wear rollers in the dining hall).Why do I remember silly things like that?

Kate brought some vintage clothing as the textures were really nice.  She dipped them for a few seconds to get a paler color.

This was a favorite in my batch.  It was a blend as it didn't take a real deep color.  It was also a sheer and had been rusted so the combination made for pretty results.
Til next time....Have a great week.

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.