Tag Archive for ‘natural dyeing’ at make something

Tag Archive for 'natural dyeing'

COLOURFUL FABRIC DRESS BOOK : T-SHIRT

Published

on July 23, 2010

in japanese dress/craft, natural dyeing and stitchery

. 6 Comments

After the India Flint workshop, I was inspired to try doing a simple tie dye t-shirt. I used the super simple pattern from the nani IRO book, “Colourful Fabric Dress Book“. We have some lovely white organic cotton jersey at the workroom that was perfect for this project. I cut out the pieces (there are only 2!) for this project and wrapped some rubber bands around the sleeve area and the hem. I decided to forgo mordanting the fabric in order to get a softer result. The next time I dye this cotton jersey, I’ll try using milk as my mordant. (Awesome tip from India Flint!) I used a very exhausted logwood dye bath we’ve had at the shop for almost a year. Every time we do a Natural Dyeing class, I always get Julie to leave behind the logwood since I’m so in love with grey.

I absolutely love the soft dove grey colour of the jersey. I’m also really delighted with my tie dye experiment. I am definitely going to do more. I actually also tie dyed some other pieces of jersey at the same time to make a couple pairs of underwear.

The sewing for this project was merely four seams sewn on up on the serger. It couldn’t be any easier. I didn’t even do anything to finish the edges on the neckline, sleeves or hem. I thought of possibly doing some satin bias trim, but then I wanted to wear it right away. Maybe another day or perhaps I’ll save that for another project.

INDIA FLINT WORKSHOP

Published

Karyn

on July 19, 2010

in colour, gardening, local and natural dyeing

. 13 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I had the honour of joining a week long workshop at the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op with Australian textile artist, India Flint. India is world renowned for the magic she has created with natural dyes and her unique approach to imparting colour and foliage prints to textiles and paper.

Since taking our natural dyeing class last year, I’ve been wanting to do more, (I think about it all the time!) but somehow haven’t gotten around to it. Silly how that happens. The opportunity to spend a whole week playing with plants and fabric with India at the helm was just perfect.

We spent our days learning India’s gentle ways of collecting nature materials from florist or grocer garbage (with permission), going on windfall walks (collecting only what has fallen on the ground and not harvesting), learning about local weeds (plants that are in excess for picking) and looking in our own backyards. Even her mordants are made of milk (soy or cow), found scrap metals, pickle juice and aluminum foil from chocolate bars rather than hard and caustic metals.

India’s approach to dyeing was very freeing. We didn’t use a scale, a thermometer or a ‘recipe’ of any sort. We were encouraged to work on small samples (rather than dyeing 3 metres at once), mostly using silk and wool (protein fibres which take colour much more vibrantly). We lay our plant material directly on the fabric and then wrapped or folded it into tight bundles with elastic and string. We had several dye pots on the go, one with onion skins, one with iron scraps, one with who-knows-what. We would sometimes leave the bundles overnight and arrive in the morning to unwrap our treasures. The imprints we each got were truly remarkable. What a beautiful way to mark fabric.

We used the same process to dye paper that we had hand stitched to create a little book. Each student also spent the week deconstructing a men’s shirt to make a special work apron, which we also dyed and hand stitched our samples to. At the end of the week, we took a group photo wearing our aprons. So cute!

On the last day we gathered up all our favourite samples and took some time to admire each other’s work. It was amazing to see how much of our personalities was present in our dyeing samples. Such diverse results from working with mostly the same materials.

I’ve been reflecting on the experience ever since with much wonder. Thank you, India!

I took tons of photos during the week and I’ve posted them all on flickr here.

Learn more about India Flint : site : blog

365 : 84

Published

Karyn

on April 3, 2010

in 365, natural dyeing and textiles

. 1 Comment

March 25, 2010 of 365 : natural dyed textile creation by debbie arruda

Debbie is in her last days of school and she’s making some really awesome stuff!

365 : 1

Published

Karyn

on January 4, 2010

in 365 and hello

. 10 Comments

365 : bedside table

Happy New Year! I’ve just had three seriously relaxing (& luxurious) days off. They were much needed! Everyone is abuzz about doing the 365 photo project and I’ve decided to join in. This is just the push I need to start taking more photographs this year, hopefully with people in them, sometimes. I wish I took better people photos. I know that Anabela is doing it, any one else out there embarking on the challenge?

Perhaps now is a good time to share a few other goals I have for the coming year…

decorate. i’d like to spend more time working on projects for the house & shop. this includes acquiring and especially hanging more artwork. this also includes a very big project of re-doing the workroom’s couch in natural dyed fabrics. (with help from erin)
journal. (offline) i used to spend a lot of time working on a visual diary and i really miss it. at the very least, i’ve started a project/fabric diary.
grow. more herbs, vegetables and flowers. i also need to learn how to prune plants properly. i get scared to trim them and then they grow all wild and gangly.
preserve. i just started getting into it last year with pickles, canning tomatos and jam, but there is so much more to try!
quilt. especially hand quilting. i hope to start lots of fun quilting projects this year, but i especially want to finish this quilt. soon. ish.
natural dye. i’m completely fascinated and want to do make all kinds of things from naturally dyed fabrics. i’ve also just learned about solar dyeing and it’s the most beautiful process!

WARDROBE REFRESH #4

Published

Karyn

on September 27, 2009

in natural dyeing, textiles and the workroom

. 9 Comments

Last night I dreamt about natural dyeing. Stirring big black pots of coloured liquid with fabric swirling all around. To be fair, before I fell asleep I was looking up information on logwood. Logwood is my favourite natural dye, it gives you shades of black, grey, purple and everything in between. Right now, I am in love with all of those colours. I can’t get enough.

I don’t have a “before” photo, but this button-down shirt used to be white. It’s just a simple fitted cotton shirt from Abercrombie. The problem was that it got some mysterious yellow stains after a washing that made it unwearable. Rather than toss it, I kept it hoping that someday I might be able to revive it back to life.

The second run of our Natural Dyeing class just finished and we had a logwood dyebath just hanging out at the workroom. After mordanting the shirt, I dropped it into the pot for a half hour. The resulting colour is a subtle greyish lavender and now the shirt is back in my closet.

I’ve been thinking about doing a quilt from natural dyed fabrics. There is something so incredible and rich about fabrics that are natural dyed. Even the slight unevenness of the colour adds to the charm.

I’d love to do a quilt with all different shades of logwood and a bit of pink cochineal thrown in. I’ve started a list of future quilt projects I hope to tackle. I have a feeling this list is going to grow quickly. You’ll find it at the bottom of My Crafty List of Things to Do.

STYLISH DRESS BOOK 2 : DRESS “V”

Published

Karyn

on July 7, 2009

in colour, stitchery and textiles

. 34 Comments

Here it is, my indigo-dyed, shibori dress. I’m so in love with it.

When choosing the pattern for this project, I wanted to choose a fairly simple dress that had sleeves to show off the shibori pattern. Rather than try to cover the entire dress with the pattern, I focused on having it clustered around the bottom of all the pieces. To get the specific placement, I cut out all my pattern pieces out of white muslin, serged all the edges and did the shibori right on each dress piece.

The pattern is dress “V” from Stylish Dress Book 2. This is actually the first dress I’ve made from this book. I’m just finishing off a second one this week. Melinda made this particular dress a few months ago, so I already knew how cute it was. Choosing the contrasting fabric to go with it was difficult. I’m pretty sure I pulled every navy bolt of fabric off the shelf before finally settling on this floral print from Windham. I also made fabric covered buttons using this fabric for the placket. Having matching buttons always makes a project feel polished.

This dress was simple to make. It has lots of pretty gathering on the neckline and sleeves. I did mess up one part though. I failed to add seam allowance to the placket down the centre, so I had an extra big hole down the centre of the dress. To fix it, I just created a little centre pleat below the placket which brought together the edges of the placket hole. Mistakes often lead to creative solutions, so I always try to avoid getting too upset when I realize that I’ve done something ‘wrong’.

This is my favourite dress so far. I’m really, really proud of it. I definitely want to keep experimenting with natural dyeing fabrics to make more clothing. The soft, uneven texture looks so beautiful. I even have the beginnings of an idea to do a quilt with only natural dyed fabrics.

INDIGO DYEING & SHIBORI

Published

Karyn

on July 6, 2009

in colour, textiles and the workroom

. 5 Comments

The last day of the Natural Dyeing class was all about indigo dyeing. I’ve always admired Japanese shibori dyeing, so I couldn’t wait to try it out in this class. Shibori is a method of creating patterns on fabric during the dyeing process by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or compressing it.

I got the idea to dye fabric for a dress from Melissa and pre-cut and serged all my pieces beforehand. This way I could plan exactly where the shibori would be located on the dress. I used a pure white muslin rather than a natural coloured one to keep the blue clearer. To create my design I placed screws (of various sizes and shapes) underneath my fabric and wrapped each one up tightly with heavy upholstery thread. This is a fairly labour intensive type of shibori, but I really liked the circular patterns it creates.

Deeper blue colours are achieved through repeated immersion into the dye vat. I was able to dip my pieces into the vat four times. It’s a bit hard to tell what the colour will dry as, it is always much darker when it’s wet. When I unwrapped all the screws, several of them had transferred rust marks onto the fabric which I actually really like. The fabric dried to a really nice blue and I even like the slightly uneven colouring, it gives it a vintage feel.

Shibori tights? Yes, please!

Next post – the finished dress!

NATURAL DYEING

Published

Karyn

on July 5, 2009

in colour, textiles and the workroom

. 10 Comments

Natural dyeing is something I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time. The idea of one day growing things in my backyard that I can harvest and then dye my own fabrics with is incredibly exciting. When I browse through seed catalogs, I’m always taking note of the plants that are candidates for my future dye garden. When I caught wind that Julie Sinden had lots of amazing experience in the field, I set the wheels in motion to set up a class as quickly as possible.

The class was pretty magical. It opened up a whole new world of possibility with textiles and sewing for me. Just the history alone of where these natural dyes came from is so interesting. Also, natural dyes are not exactly what I thought – you can’t actually use beets to dye fabric or yarn, as it won’t last and neither will turmeric. Pomegranate skins will give you a yellow-ish colour, not pink or red. Rhubarb root, mushrooms, oak leaves and walnut husks are all possible dyes that I’m interested in trying. I’m cooking up some future dyeing projects for myself already.

The last day of the class we did indigo dyeing which is a post all on its’ own.

Just look at all this yummy colour!