July 28, 2011

Shibori Weekend

Last weekend, Andi led a 2 day shibori dying workshop. 12 Fibervision members had a blast in this exhausting workshop. The first afternoon was spent painting the fabric with dye and letting it dry. This part was pretty quick and easy. No soda ash was added to the dye on the first day, so all the colors mingled and created new colors on the second day. We spent a fair amount of time wrapping tubes, rope, and beads with fabric. Then we spent quite of bit of time mixing, and sloshing in colorful dyes. Then we spent a lot of time untying and unwrapping all the pieces and rinsing all the dye out.
Most of my pieces came out beautiful, but I got a few uglies too.
Here is the under-painted fabric that has lemon yellow, fuchsia and red/orange. I used the highly technical splatter technique.
Here it is after it was folded, wrapped and dipped into teal dye.
Here's another under-painted piece that has blended stripes.
And here it is after wrapping, tying and dipping in purple. ooohhhhh, I like this one a lot!
This piece was plain white fabric that was wrapped and dipped into black.
This piece was previously dyed (and fixed) with green, blue, and fuchsia splotches. I created a the circles by placing brass circles between the layers of fabric, and clamping the layers together.
If you decide to try this with a group, here's a helpful hint. Write your name on tyvek and attach it to each piece of fabric you dye. Your name will still show, no matter what color you dye with. That's a lesson learned the hard way!