Indigo T-shirts with Kids

Sunday at Herndon ArtSpace we taught a group of 7 kids and 1 mom about dyeing with indigo and some methods of creating resists for the dye called shibori.  Indigo is a natural dye that historically comes from plants, but a large amount of the dye produced today is synthetic.  It is the dye that is most often associated with denim and blue jeans. After learning some simple folds and other ways of creating resists with marble and golf balls, the girls practiced with bandanas.

Then we went outside to start the dyeing process.  The indigo forms a "flower" on top of the pot, which is basically foam, that needs to be removed before putting anything into the dye. After wetting the items to be dyed in plain water, they were ready to go into the indigo. 

It's important not to create a lot of movement in the indigo pot because that incorporates too much oxygen.  Hold the object you are dyeing below the surface and gently massage to work the dye through the layers. When the items are first removed from the indigo, they are green.  But exposure to oxygen in the air changes them to the familiar blue color.  Here are some of the bandanas.  You can still see small amounts of green in the first one.

After dyeing the bandanas, they prepared their t-shirts and went through the same process.  Here are some of the results.

They all seemed to have a good time and everyone had successful results.  It was fun to share this technique with a different age group!