Threads of a story: indigo

Monday, 18 July 2011

All Tied Up.

The next two workshops coming up in August at Studio 15 are Stitch and Tie to Dye and Indigo, favorites of mine. Years ago I got into dyeing and patterning cloth because I didn't have the cash to buy the amount of different fabrics I needed to work, so I bought inexpensive calico, muslin, scrim, old cotton bed sheets etc. I soon became addicted to this way of working using every method I could to produce individual designs and colours. When you adopt these processes your cloth is unique and you won't see it anywhere else. I became increasingly fascinated by the beautiful cloths produced across the world using simple techniques to make complex designs and researched as many as I could find, clamping, stitching and tying were included.

Cloth 'tied' with rubber bands and the resulting pattern after dyeing in Indigo.

Stitching to dye.

Target tied cloth and the resulting pattern.

The beauty of a complex stitched and tied cloth.

Wonderful, beautiful Shibori cloth.

BOOK NOW via the STUDIO 15 website if you want to learn with us.

Thanks.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Midweek meander. Beautiful, Magical, Indigo.

Using indigo as a method of dyeing is for me totally addictive, the magical process of watching the dye oxidise in the air turning from a greeny yellow to blue is akin to alchemy. Pulling your cloth out of the vat on a sunny day, listening to the breeze slap the wet cloths around spattering you with dots of colour and watching the fabrics metamorphosis is a truly magical experience.

Indigo has been used across the world for hundreds of years as a dye substance, it is a plant which looks like a relative of the pea family, I often wonder who was the first person to discover it's potential and how they discovered it.

Indigo blue hands, image Caroline Lee. www.thruaglassdarkly.com

I think that there can not be one person in the world who does not know indigo blue, used to colour jeans and work clothes for so long.

Indigofera Tinctoria.

Indigo dye vats in Japan.

African indigo.

In the past indigo dyeing used to be a difficult hit and miss process for the craft dyer, but with the advent of synthetic indigo and different additives it is now a lot easier as long as you respect the dye and understand the process. Indigo either natural or synthetic is insoluble, to make it soluble so that it yields up its wonderful colour it must undergo reduction. Reduction is a process of extracting oxygen from the dye bath, making the indigo soluble in the form of a blueish bronze 'flower' on top of a brackish yellow vat streaked with blue.

Indigo 'flower'.

This dye substance will dye cellulose based fibre and protein fibres which have been scoured (washed) by boiling before dyeing. As it is a cold dye bath indigo is excellent for using with resist techniques such as wax and starch, it is also used with many tied and clamped resist techniques.

These are details of a quilt that I made many years ago when I was first experimenting with indigo. It grows more beautiful with age and still snuggles me up every winter.