Today's post is brought to you by...
...the letter "U," for "update"!
I was out of town for family reasons for pretty much the entire past week, so I didn't have time for any sewing. No new progress to report on my MQG Challenge Quilt, and no new dye vats either. Instead, I'll mainly just share some show-and-tell from my second indigo dye vat on May 2.
As I mentioned before, I thought my first vat had too much reducing agent, which kept me from getting dark blues. For this vat, I cut back on the thiox, and I achieved a nice gradation of solids:
From left to right, the above fabrics represent a sequence of 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8 dips in the indigo bath. The actual dyeing sequence consisted of four fat eighths in which I withdrew one piece from dyeing after every two rounds of dipping and aerating (what I call a 2-4-6-8 dip). I did the three-dip piece separately towards the end of the afternoon, when I was just trying to use up as much dye as possible. Although the indigo isn't as colorfast as I'd like (I had a lot of dye runoff when rinsing), I'm really happy with these fabrics, especially the deep, dark blue of the final piece.
As with the first vat, I also dyed a number of pieces with various shibori techniques:
Itajime (clamp resist):
Arashi (pole-wrapping):
My attempt at shirokage ("white shadow" stitched shibori) didn't work out quite as I had hoped. I was trying for the "white box" pattern that I've been admiring in Cape Cod Shibori's Etsy shop. Instead, here's what I ended up with:
It's still an interesting piece, even though it's not what I wanted. I think I stitched it incorrectly, and I probably also made mistakes in the way that I tied it to the paint roller brush that I used as a resist. Now I'm in the process of stitching two new fat quarters in order to try again. Here's how the first looked yesterday evening as I got started:
When I've prepped both of these fabrics, I intend to throw one in the dye bath straight up, while I'll try the shirokage technique again with the other, for a positive/negative comparison. I've finished stitching the first piece, and it took almost an hour just to pull up the threads. The knots pulled through the fabric on a few of them, so I have a little patching up to do--I'll see how that affects the finished product.
Linking up to WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced and the Needle and Thread Network. Happy sewing!
...the letter "U," for "update"!
I was out of town for family reasons for pretty much the entire past week, so I didn't have time for any sewing. No new progress to report on my MQG Challenge Quilt, and no new dye vats either. Instead, I'll mainly just share some show-and-tell from my second indigo dye vat on May 2.
As I mentioned before, I thought my first vat had too much reducing agent, which kept me from getting dark blues. For this vat, I cut back on the thiox, and I achieved a nice gradation of solids:
From left to right, the above fabrics represent a sequence of 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8 dips in the indigo bath. The actual dyeing sequence consisted of four fat eighths in which I withdrew one piece from dyeing after every two rounds of dipping and aerating (what I call a 2-4-6-8 dip). I did the three-dip piece separately towards the end of the afternoon, when I was just trying to use up as much dye as possible. Although the indigo isn't as colorfast as I'd like (I had a lot of dye runoff when rinsing), I'm really happy with these fabrics, especially the deep, dark blue of the final piece.
As with the first vat, I also dyed a number of pieces with various shibori techniques:
Itajime (clamp resist):
Arashi (pole-wrapping):
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| l. to r.: tesuji and arashi shibori |
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| tesuji close-up |
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| bomaki |
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| shirokage close-up |
When I've prepped both of these fabrics, I intend to throw one in the dye bath straight up, while I'll try the shirokage technique again with the other, for a positive/negative comparison. I've finished stitching the first piece, and it took almost an hour just to pull up the threads. The knots pulled through the fabric on a few of them, so I have a little patching up to do--I'll see how that affects the finished product.
Linking up to WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced and the Needle and Thread Network. Happy sewing!
Love the shibori pieces. I look forward to seeing what you make with them.
ReplyDeletethese are wonderful! Love your letters too!!!
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