Friday 28 January 2011

Chapter 6 - Further Experiments

 I was very disappointed by my Shibori results. The dye had seeped underneath stitching and threads, and, at best, the colour was a dark blue rather than black. I re-read Sian's instructions, and decided to give it one more try. This time I used Dylon cold water dye.


2058 was wrapped tightly with string, dipped in dye, and microwaved for 4 mins. I am really happy with the depth of black and the resulting pattern!

 

2059 was stitched in pin-tucks, gathered tightly, dipped in dye and microwaved. I think the stitching was probably too small to enable me to pull the gathers suffuciently tight enough, but even so, it gave a pleasing result.


2060 was stitched in random circles which were gathered tightly and microwave dyed. I think perhaps that the very dark areas were created where the dye powder hadn't quite disolved properly, so creating a concentration of black dye.


2061 was hand stitched in zig zag formation. Gathered tightly, then painted gently on top of the gathers with black dylon dye.


2062. Arashi Shibori, around a plastic drain pipe. Again painted very gently with dye, making sure that the fabric is not saturated with dye,

Moral of my story. A lot of time can be saved by reading Sian's instructions properly before embarking upon an exercise!

5 comments:

  1. These are really smashing!Well done you.

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  2. Hope you are pleased with these ones, they are beautifully clear and great patterns.

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  3. It is tricky but these are looking good. I also ended up with more denim-looking than black samples. Don't worry.

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  4. These are looking really good - I hope I can achieve such striking effects when I get that far!

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  5. Julia - The dying didn't really come out black-black for me either, just a pretty, dark blue. Nice, though. Dye also seeped through, etc. Microwaved??? What does that do? I love all the effects you've produced here. Beautiful!

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