Dye Workshop

Mark went on a business trip. Iris went to San Diego Zoo day camp (and her grandparents' house) and I had the house to myself to play. There were onesies for more babies on the way...

...bubble rompers for Iris' cousin,












...dresses for two sisters...

...dresses for two sisters and a matching top for their mommy...

..more tops...


...and another dress.
This last dress came out too dark in the upper left bodice area so Iris and I lightened it with a stencil and some dishwashing gel used as a discharge paste. We are quite happy with the result.

I also tried some Shibori techniques on a shirt for Mark. In the middle of tying,
after painting the dye on the shirt,
the resulting front,
and back.
I just noticed that Dharma has instructions for a similiar Shibori project. I used crochet cotton which is a bit thicker than the dental floss that they used. They demonstrate one particularly effective techique. After you have painted the color on, lightly brush a contrasting color on the surface of some areas. It creates a sheer wash with very distinct patterning. You can see the effect in the bottom section of the shirt where I washed a bit of sapphire blue on top of the turquoise blue.

I feel a digression coming on.
While taking a shibori workshop from Joy-Lily, I made the error of referring to what we were doing as tie-dyeing. She promptly told me that we were practicing Shibori, not tie-dyeing. I asked her what the difference between the two was. She said that tie-dye is something cheap you find at a crafts sale. We were learning an art.

I am reading Yoshiko Wada's definitive book about Shibori which is worth every penny for all that I am learning from it. Wada also make a point that Shibori is a much more than tie-dye. She says that Shibori represents a whole genre of techniques that includes much more than tying. I stand corrected.

Oh, no! Another digression
This whole distinction reminds me of the time an older gentleman where Maribeth and I work referred to me as a girl. He recoiled in mock horror and said, "We are not supposed to call you that anymore. Nowadays, you are called women."

I replied without missing a beat, "I don't care what you call me as long as you pay me like a man."

He grinned and said, "You're all right."

Back to the present.
The organic cotton is white no more. I got very carried away with the dye this week. I followed the directions on Dharma's website except that I poured the dye on instead of painting it on. I then gently massaged the dye mixture into the yarn. (I used leftover dyes from the other project. It took approximately 3 cups of dye stock solution to dye two skeins of the Inca organic cotton. The dye stock solutions were mixed at 1 tsp of dye powder to 1 cup of water.)

Rinsing did not take as long as I feared.

I will post pictures of a knitted swatch when I finish the Basalt Tank (very soon, I hope).

Click here to see undyed yarns and here and here to see the finished yarn.