Fun with Shibori -- Part 2 -- Dyeing

As promised, here is part two of my shibori experiment: DYEING!

I had to make sure we had the right tools: bowls, measuring spoons and cups, plastic bags, rubber gloves, etc... My mama had given me dyes from Dharma Trading, but you can get them a number of places.

 Apparently I was really excited about this project.

Be very precise with measuring. My handy dandy book gave us basic amounts for different color saturation levels.

Grace, my lovely assistant, stood by and carefully monitored the process. 

Notice the kiddy pool in the background? That's where we soaked the fabrics before dyeing. 

Grace became an expert at measuring and pouring water. 

Then the fabric goes in!

 Have to make sure the dye distributes properly. That sounds super official, right?

It looks like this when you take it out. Kind of weird looking. 

 Look at this determination!

After we dyed, we put the fabrics in a plastic bag (one bag per dye color) and set them in the sun for a few hours. The waiting is the hardest. 

Part 3: The Reveal is up next!

New looks!

I'm trying out a new pattern that I got from my mama. Here are a few looks with the top, skirt, and pants that I made to all go together. OMG, I just made toddler separates!!

I think I would actually like these pieces in my size...

Fun with Shibori -- Part 1 -- Binding

I haven't posted in a while -- life has been a bit crazy. So now that it's a brand new month, I'm back up and running, and I think I'll start it all off with a three-part series. Yep, that's right. I have a three-part series for you all! Here goes. 

On my trip home to Iowa last month I had some time to play around with shibori. What's shibori?

Shibori (according to Wikipedia) is a "Japanese term for methods of dyeing cloth with a pattern by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, compressing it or capping." You may know some of these methods as tie-dye.  

I had this handy book that I'd been dyeing to read. Yes, that was a shibori pun...It was a great primer and walked me through basic binding and dyeing techniques. 

I had also stocked up on cheap cotton muslin and lawn fabrics. I like to scope out the remnant section for deals. My mama happened to have some string for binding. Hint for next time: get kite string that doesn't break.  

I started off with a pattern called the Spider Web. It's really basic, but still looks super cool.

Everyone wanted to help! Fortunately, there were plenty of fabric pieces.

 This is Grace's spider web binding.

Here you can see what our bindings look like before dyeing.

 Apparently, some bindings are considered art. Grace considered hers a hat.

Another method of binding is called capping. You take a small pebble or bean under your fabric and bind tightly around it. We used dry black beans. The book recommends mung beans. The binding at the base of the bean will eventually create white space since the dye won't be able to access the fabric at that point. 

The last method I really wanted to try was folding and compressing the fabric. I accordion folded my fabric and then wrapped it with string. I was supposed to compress the folds with two wooden blocks, but I didn't have any...so I worked with what I had. It ended up looking like this when I was done. 

And here ends Part 1. Next up: DYEING!