Eco Dyeing Heaven

Spent a fantastic morning with Jenny Leslie improving my Eco Dyeing techniques. Jenny was extremely helpful and had lots of advice (some of it direct from her course with India Flint – sooo jealous).

The anticipation during unwrapping is great!

Unwrapping the bundles

More unwrapping

Anyway here are the initial results – not yet washed out so hope they don’t fade too much – very happy with them, although may need to re-dye to turquoise scarf for more contrast/colour.

Cotton with copper mordant and Eucalypus overdyed

Cotton with milk mordant and Blackberry Leaves

Dyed scarf with Blackberry Leaf overdyed

Silk scarf with ornamental eucalyptus

Shirbori Dyeing – Itajime

Itajime uses clamps to form a resist – I used pegs and bulldog type clips but you can also use string; flat pieces of plastic or found objects.

Itajime using pegs

Itajime with pegs

Itajime with bulldog type clips

Itajime with bulldog type clips

This piece has less colour as only a small portion remained on the surface and in direct contact with the dye.

Scrunched and held in place with string

 

 

 

Shibori Dyeing – Folding Resists

When folding it is important to expose as many edges to the dye as possible – so don’t fold the sections back on themselves, enclosing sections in the centre of the bundle. Instead use a concertina method, pleating each section on top of the other so that the edges remain exposed.

Getting some lovely patterns and I really enjoy the fact that I do not have complete control and so there are lots of surprises and no two designs are the same.

These are dyed with Brazilwood or Onion skins.

Concertina Folding

Concertina Folded Resist

Concertina folding

 

Triangular Folds

Triangular folding

 

Triangular Folded Resists

Shibori Folding and Dyeing – Karamatsu and Arashi

Karamatsu – is a circular design created by using stitch as a resist. I also used stitch to create concertina folds and a leaf pattern.  As you can see my skill with this technique still needs some work.  However, happy accidents can still produce interesting patterns. This piece was dyed with blackberries.

Karamatsu

Arashi or pole wrapping involves wrapping the fabric around a stick, bottle or similar object, using elastic bands to hold in place and squashing the ends together to create tight pleats. Sometimes this can result in undyed areas but in this case I have achieved different intensities of dye, depending on how near the surface/close contact with the dye the fabric lay. Blueberries were used in this dye bath.

Arashi

Discharge Paste Experiments

Here are my first experiments with household chemicals as a discharge paste.  On my first piece I thought it hadn’t worked, so went out and left it on the fabric – on my return it had certainly removed the colour but had also started to eat into the material!

These samples are scrunch dyed using Indigo and then printed with leaves, coated with the ‘discharge paste’.  I am very pleased with these initial results and keen to move onto to larger pieces of fabric and preloved clothing – whoo hoo!

(Indigo) Blue is the Colour

Whoo hoo – my first indigo dye session. Lots of reluctance for the pot to turn yellowy green and blue paler than expected but some pleasing initial results.

Now for Shibori and over-dyeing – lots more to explore!

Indigo dyeing

More Indigo

Summer Blues

Lovely tone changes

Can I Knit Bark?

I find myself drawn back to the traditional skills I learnt as a child.  The question is how well will knitted bark samples work?

This one features knitted bobbles before the whole piece was felted and needle felting to (unsuccessfully) add carded wool onto the surface.

This time I tied resists into the knit before felting (Shibori) – which I really do like – and then added hand embroidery to the surface.

Finally an attempt at knitting some of the bark texture – possibly some potential in this but I’m keen to explore the Shibori felting method as this seems to give the strongest samples so far.