Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Shibori Fun

Last month, I went over to Sandy's house and we had a Shibori session. I had been wanting to do some clamped Shibori for some time and since Sandy has done this before, I asked if she would teach me how she does it. She has the perfect set up for dyeing--a second kitchen area that is dedicated to her fabric dyeing. She also had all the tools and supplies. So all I needed to bring along were a few things like fabric and dye and gloves. 

Sandy let me choose two colors of dye that we would work with. The dyeing method was not the low water immersion technique but a bucket full of color in which we submerged our clamped fabric and let them soak up color for over an hour. Below are the results from the pieces I did.










Out of all these pieces, I think the first three shown are my favorites. Some of the results were a bit less than exciting but that's how you learn, I guess.

The second to last photo was not a clamped piece, but a pole wrapped piece.

The last photo shown was a piece of fabric that Sandy gave me to play with. She had already applied some dye to it and let it dry. The dyes she painted on gradated from yellows to reds as you can see in the piece. Then after the dye is dried, it is clamped and them submerged in the dye bucket with the other pieces and the end results are pretty cool, even though I wasn't thrilled with the results of the shape I had clamped on it. She showed me some wonderful pieces she had done this way and I am anxious to try it on my own.

I've been collecting some tools for doing my own Shibori dye sessions and I have acquired quite a few now and I've also bought some clamps to hold everything together. I want to also try this with a low water dyeing technique and see what I think of that.