Friday we experimented some with our indigo pot by refreshing it with new soda ash, thiox and pre-reduced indigo. When traveling to Lowell on Thursday, Elizabeth's sister drove which allowed us to both stitch some pimatex cotton fat quarters with gathering stitches so the thread could be drawn up allowing the folds to create interesting patterns and textures. Elizabeth stitched half circles about half an inch apart on the folded edge of her piece of fabric. Here it is all drawn up.
And here it is after dyeing. Since our indigo pot was fresh we dipped only once to get this amount of blue.
Sue stitched her piece in zigzag rows. Here's the partially stitched piece.
The next photo shows it gathered up before dyeing, and the finished piece after dyeing.
Other items we tried out for creating our fabrics included wiffle golf balls, small marbles, flat marbles (like the ones used in flower arranging), some small plastic 3D triangles, small flat wooden discs and buttons. Most items are held in the fabric with assorted sizes of rubber bands. For the tiny items we used small "ouch-less" hair bands bought at the Dollar Store in packs of 500!
Indigo is interesting to use because as you remove it from the dye bath you can watch the blue color (think blue jeans) develop from the bright lime that it is when you first take it out of the water.
Here are some of the finished items. Below, Sue used the wiffle golf balls for the top piece, and the bottom piece had a combination of flat wooden discs and buttons.
In the next photo, the top was accordion pleated and rubber banded, and the bottom was created with the floral marbles.
We did some more pieces today, so stay tuned!
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