Shibori Attempt #1

A first attempt at indigo dyeing…

Results of my first attempt hanging on the back stoep. :)

I’m probably quite late to the party that is Japanese indigo dyeing, but better late than never, right?

Shibori is a Japanese thing — as I’m discovering, so many awesome design ideas are — and it involves folding, clamping, and dyeing fabric with indigo. Its all over Pinterest, and every other person seems to have tried it so I wanted to have my turn.

I couldn’t find any indigo crystals (that seemed to be the thing I needed) so in the end I tried good old ‘Lady Dye’ — a cold water dye you can buy at most South African pharmacies. I bought “Atlantic Blue” which as it turned out was more “Pastel Dusk” and went to work. I had a few metres of white cotton blend that I thought would work well for a first experiment, and made a collection of tongue depressors, chopsticks, rubber bands, string, bottle lids and so on. These things are all needed for clamping the fabric before dyeing.

The idea with shibori is that the sections of fabric that are folded, bound, or twisted aren’t exposed to the dye, and remain white. The rest takes on the colour of the dye you use, and the pattern is determined by the type of binding and folding you go for.

There are a variety of shibori techniques involving stitching, triangular folds, concertina folds, capping, scrunching and wrapping (check it out for yourself on Pinterest).

Here are a few techniques and thingi-mabobs I used for my first batch — chopsticks, tongue depressors, an old bottle, string, elastic bands and bits of shaped cardboard.

Round One

This didn’t go so well. Firstly, the cotton blend I’d used was more synthetic than cotton and didn’t absorb the dye so very well. Secondly, the colour I’d bought was way too light, and everything was really washed out. Thirdly, I had neglected to buy a pair of rubber gloves and my hands turned blue.

Turned out this didn’t really matter at ALL when I finally unravelled the bits and pieces of fabric that had been sitting in the dye. It was really exciting! It was kind of amazing to see the kind of patterns that emerged. I had some streaky patterns as a result of tying fabric around a bottle with string and scrunching it. Then there were the ‘blocky’ patterns resulting from the square fold. Then there were the distinctly ‘tie-dyed’ type patterns which I probably won’t repeat.

I couldn’t wait to get started on my second attempt.