Indigo dye day
Oct. 11th, 2015 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infryqYesterday I had Lea and Charlotte over for an indigo dye day. It was really fun! Photos here: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/d290davwqbg1nnq/AABMqiVoZc8BXzmm6BSFdx8ha
I ordered pre-reduced indigo, thiox, and soda ash from Dharma Trading, and a case of floursack towels from some kitchen supply company (Towels & Home LLC?).
First the towels were scoured for dyeing: I processed them in batches in my dyepot with 2T washing soda per gallon of water and a good squirt of dish soap. Boil for two hours, rinse, dry, press. The scouring water turns a gross yellow-brown color (and these were brand-new towels). Makes you want to boil all your laundry.
Then I started preparing resist patterns. Shibori is a collection of Japanese techniques for creating patterns by using pressure to prevent dye from entering certain portions of the fabric. Tie-dye is a type of shibori, but there are lots of other types and I wanted to try several of them.
Nui shibori uses stitched patterns, pulled tight to apply the pressure and resist the dye. Two types of stitches are used, with different effects: a running stitch and an overcast stitch. You can also get different effects by stacking several sets of running stitches next to each other, and by aligning or not aligning the stitches. I made 3 towels using nui shibori. I created a mokume pattern, which resembles wood grain, by folding the fabric in half, and stitching a bunch of concentric semicircles. I attempted to make a shippo tsunagi pattern (a four-fold flower sort of repeating pattern) and indeed drew out the grid and all the circles, an started stitching the curves with an overcast stitch. That turned out to be a huge pain though, so I artfully selected only some of the curves to actually stitch. Finally, I sketched a fish, and used several stitching types to create different textural effects. For the fins, I drew the lines that I wanted to appear, then stitched perpendicular to the lines, aligning all my stitches to create fine pleats. For the scales, I outlined each scale with a running stitch. For the remaining outlines, I used a running stitch or an overcast stitch depending on what I thought might stand out the best. Doing all the stitching on the fish took a week's worth of evenings, and pulling all the stitches tight took another week's worth, so this was my big hopeful project.
Itajime shibori uses shaped clamps to apply pressure to the fabric and resist the dye. Normally the fabric is folded so that the clamps produce a repeating pattern. There are lots of complex folds you can do (or spend decades learning to do), but I did a very simple one: first you accordion fold the fabric along its length; then you accordion fold the resulting strip in the other direction so it produces an equilateral triangle. This creates a hexagonal pattern. I clamped the resulting triangular stack between two pieces of wood to create the resist.
Arashi shibori creates a rippling, water-like pattern by wrapping fabric around a pole and scrunching it up. I tried two variations of this. In the first one, I sewed the fabric into a tube, and inserted a 1" dowel. Then I twisted the fabric tube until it more-or-less bunched evenly around the dowel, wrapped it with string, and scrunched it all to one side. In the second one, I pleated the fabric to reduce its width to 10" or so, then wrapped it diagonally around a chunk of 4" PVC drainpipe so that the edges lined up without overlapping. When I ran out of pipe, I wrapped it with string leaving around 1" of space between wraps, then scrunched up the fabric so it took up less space. Then I continued wrapping fabric, wrapping string, and scrunching. I used pins to hold the pleats in place, though I've seen tutorials that use masking tape for this too. On dye day I tried to duplicate this process without pinning, and the pleats became messier and messier as I went until they pretty much fell apart, so I'd recommend using at least something to hold things together.
Dye day was great! We did quick stitch-resist and clamped-resist patterns, and some more west-familiar tie dye patterns. Of all the methods I like the arashi shibori best, because it is quick to set up, quick to tear down, and creates reliably gorgeous results. Clamped resist is fast to do and fast to undo, but can be underwhelming -- my first try didn't do what I expected it to (I think I tightened the clamp too much), but my second and third tries were more gently clamped and left more fabric uncovered and were much better. Stitch resist is time-consuming to do, and picking all the little bits of threads out is difficult to do when the fabric is wet, but the results are stunning.
After a round of cotton dyeing, I mixed up a few tablespoons of hide glue in some water, microwaved until it had more-or-less dissolved, and added that to the vat for some protein fiber dyeing. I dyed some bright white yarn that I spun this spring to a really rich medium blue, and overdyed some weld-dyed yarns and fiber to a nice hunter green (weld+woad is, as it turns out, the original formula for hunter green, and the operative molecule in woad is indigotin). Lea had a silk scrap that dyed up luminously.
All in all, a lot of work, but definitely worth it. I now have thirteen really gorgeous dish towels (although I think I'm going to frame the fish!) that can be used as dish towels or pillow cases or book cover cloth or other textiley projects. Plus, picking all the thread and string out of everything left me with a bunch of fiber confetti that I can use in spinning projects, as well as some longer lengths of variegated string that I plan to offer to friends of ours that do kumihimo.
My fingernails are still blue.
I ordered pre-reduced indigo, thiox, and soda ash from Dharma Trading, and a case of floursack towels from some kitchen supply company (Towels & Home LLC?).
First the towels were scoured for dyeing: I processed them in batches in my dyepot with 2T washing soda per gallon of water and a good squirt of dish soap. Boil for two hours, rinse, dry, press. The scouring water turns a gross yellow-brown color (and these were brand-new towels). Makes you want to boil all your laundry.
Then I started preparing resist patterns. Shibori is a collection of Japanese techniques for creating patterns by using pressure to prevent dye from entering certain portions of the fabric. Tie-dye is a type of shibori, but there are lots of other types and I wanted to try several of them.
Nui shibori uses stitched patterns, pulled tight to apply the pressure and resist the dye. Two types of stitches are used, with different effects: a running stitch and an overcast stitch. You can also get different effects by stacking several sets of running stitches next to each other, and by aligning or not aligning the stitches. I made 3 towels using nui shibori. I created a mokume pattern, which resembles wood grain, by folding the fabric in half, and stitching a bunch of concentric semicircles. I attempted to make a shippo tsunagi pattern (a four-fold flower sort of repeating pattern) and indeed drew out the grid and all the circles, an started stitching the curves with an overcast stitch. That turned out to be a huge pain though, so I artfully selected only some of the curves to actually stitch. Finally, I sketched a fish, and used several stitching types to create different textural effects. For the fins, I drew the lines that I wanted to appear, then stitched perpendicular to the lines, aligning all my stitches to create fine pleats. For the scales, I outlined each scale with a running stitch. For the remaining outlines, I used a running stitch or an overcast stitch depending on what I thought might stand out the best. Doing all the stitching on the fish took a week's worth of evenings, and pulling all the stitches tight took another week's worth, so this was my big hopeful project.
Itajime shibori uses shaped clamps to apply pressure to the fabric and resist the dye. Normally the fabric is folded so that the clamps produce a repeating pattern. There are lots of complex folds you can do (or spend decades learning to do), but I did a very simple one: first you accordion fold the fabric along its length; then you accordion fold the resulting strip in the other direction so it produces an equilateral triangle. This creates a hexagonal pattern. I clamped the resulting triangular stack between two pieces of wood to create the resist.
Arashi shibori creates a rippling, water-like pattern by wrapping fabric around a pole and scrunching it up. I tried two variations of this. In the first one, I sewed the fabric into a tube, and inserted a 1" dowel. Then I twisted the fabric tube until it more-or-less bunched evenly around the dowel, wrapped it with string, and scrunched it all to one side. In the second one, I pleated the fabric to reduce its width to 10" or so, then wrapped it diagonally around a chunk of 4" PVC drainpipe so that the edges lined up without overlapping. When I ran out of pipe, I wrapped it with string leaving around 1" of space between wraps, then scrunched up the fabric so it took up less space. Then I continued wrapping fabric, wrapping string, and scrunching. I used pins to hold the pleats in place, though I've seen tutorials that use masking tape for this too. On dye day I tried to duplicate this process without pinning, and the pleats became messier and messier as I went until they pretty much fell apart, so I'd recommend using at least something to hold things together.
Dye day was great! We did quick stitch-resist and clamped-resist patterns, and some more west-familiar tie dye patterns. Of all the methods I like the arashi shibori best, because it is quick to set up, quick to tear down, and creates reliably gorgeous results. Clamped resist is fast to do and fast to undo, but can be underwhelming -- my first try didn't do what I expected it to (I think I tightened the clamp too much), but my second and third tries were more gently clamped and left more fabric uncovered and were much better. Stitch resist is time-consuming to do, and picking all the little bits of threads out is difficult to do when the fabric is wet, but the results are stunning.
After a round of cotton dyeing, I mixed up a few tablespoons of hide glue in some water, microwaved until it had more-or-less dissolved, and added that to the vat for some protein fiber dyeing. I dyed some bright white yarn that I spun this spring to a really rich medium blue, and overdyed some weld-dyed yarns and fiber to a nice hunter green (weld+woad is, as it turns out, the original formula for hunter green, and the operative molecule in woad is indigotin). Lea had a silk scrap that dyed up luminously.
All in all, a lot of work, but definitely worth it. I now have thirteen really gorgeous dish towels (although I think I'm going to frame the fish!) that can be used as dish towels or pillow cases or book cover cloth or other textiley projects. Plus, picking all the thread and string out of everything left me with a bunch of fiber confetti that I can use in spinning projects, as well as some longer lengths of variegated string that I plan to offer to friends of ours that do kumihimo.
My fingernails are still blue.
