So instead, I spent my Christmas Eve and Day working on a project I've been planning for a few months now, dyeing silk scarves with indigo using Japanese shibori methods. I started by mixing the indigo dye into a large two-gallon tub:
I had two large white silk scarves and two small ones. For one of the small ones I did an accordion fold and sandwiched it between two pieces of wood about the size of playing cards and secured with rubber bands before dipping in the dye:
For one large and one small, I did an accordion fold and clipped them before doing a simple dip three times into the dye before hanging them to dry:
For the last large scarf, I did my accordion fold and wrapped it once around a can of hairspray and secured it with three rubber bands. Then I carefully dipped just the open folded half of the cylinder into the dye:
I left these to dry overnight, and today I opened them up and rinsed them out, squeezing out the excess dye and hung them to dry. Here's what the square pattern looks like:
Here's what the single side dip pattern looks like:
And here's the cylindrical pattern:
Once they were mostly dry, I washed them with a special textile detergent to set the color and included a couple of color trapping sheets to keep the colors from bleeding. The final result was a nicely faded blue in differing gradations. I carefully ironed them and signed them on the label with the letter "M".:
This is my first time doing anything in the textile arts (except for a latchhook project when I was a kid) and it was a lot of fun. I saved half of the dye to work with again if I want to get some more articles to dye.
