Indigo dyed curtain part 2

2015/11/12
category: Dyeing
tag: Indigo dye

We made nine more squares of indigo dyed fabric for the 2nd half of our big curtain project. We used traditional Japanese techniques, which often look surprisingly modern, with the hope that it would suit the traditional Japanese room.

Here are the ‘before’s. Six of them involved stitching this time. Its a very labour intensive way to get patterns, but worth it. Lots of sewing and pulling very very tight! We were aiming for crisp lines, a proper white circle and some designs with more white than blue on to balance out the whole design of the curtain. We found it very difficult to keep the whites white!

This is half way through a clamped design (made with flat sticks and mini clamps)

藍染め

Below is the same fabric after the sticks and clamps had been rearranged and it had 2 more dips.

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The quickest and easiest one of all. scrunched in a ball with a few rubber bands. Love it though.

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We messed up a little on our dip dye by doing the first dip for too long, maybe it only needed 10 seconds, instead of a minute. four dips in total, but not as much variation as I’d hoped for.

ディップダイ

This was a real challenge to try and keep the white white. After sewing the circles and pulling them tight, we wrapped the cloth around a long, tight bundle of plastic bags (with the blue circles sticking out). Then we tried to bind the bits we wanted to keep white with more plastic bags, with varying success. On the top ‘before’ picture it’s furthest on the right.

日の出絞り

This sewn attempt was also a challenge to keep white. more plastic bags and rubber bands involved.

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Our first attempt at the wood grain effect with stitches. I think the stitches may have been too far apart, but its still a really cool pattern!

杢目絞り

I love the dark centre of this one. (more stitching).

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The Moon! or the SUN! lovely.

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I’m not really into following instructions (prefer to experiment), but I did with this one and I’m really glad cos I love it. Now I know how it works I can adapt the pattern and make something really wild and original.

藍染め