Indigo Tiers

When prepping materials to dye in our indigo adventures three years ago now, I pleated up some fine, crisp linen(?)* with the intent of making a tiered ruffled skirt. I was working at speed to get everything ready in time and didn’t think hard enough about how much fabric I needed. This turned out to be only enough for a bit more than the lowest ruffle.

*Possibly not flax? Definitely cellulose fibre. My best guess is a cotton ramie blend. It was bought very cheaply in folded bales from a closed shop clearance sale.

Happily, I also pleated up another piece of the same fabric but slightly differently and with no specific plans attached. This is the piece with the copper coloured clips below

by chance, I have a picture of these three pieces next to each other straight out of the dye vat

Argh. These images are bigger than I would choose to use. I’ve moved to a different computer and don’t currently have a copy of my usual photo editing program. Maybe I have to bite the bullet and shell out for it.

Anyway, All these pieces started the same size and were folded in three before pleating. So they all broke down most neatly to three 38cm wide strips. I used the darkest three for the middle tier and ended up needing 5 of the remaining six for the bottom tier. I still needed a top section to get the overall length I wanted. I originally meant to make another rectangular cut gathered arrangement for the top part, but flat to the body is more flattering even though it will mostly be covered in wear. So I fiddled appropriate shaped curved pieces out of the bits leftover from the indigo rays frock which is also and usefully, a slightly heavier fabric. This is just pinned, prior to final adjustments. Silly me fitted it over another skirt though so it ended up needing more overlap than intended.

The fastening is similar to the overlap method used in this colourful remodel but buttoned instead of the ties used there. A friend suggested the buttons and I think I like them. They are more comfortable than the ties I think, but require sewing on many buttons to provide the same breadth of adjustment. Optimistically I have placed buttons for my current size and a couple of smaller options. Fingers crossed I don’t need to add more.

I couldn’t face braining the pockets until I’d finished everything else. So they are not sewn in as elegantly as if I’d planned them from the beginning. I’m happy that they work though, and I ought to be able to make nicer versions if I make another skirt of this kind. Here are the shapes. The front and back need to be different because of the overlap.

and after insertion: the two sides are sewn together below the opening shown. The front section is sewn in under the waistband to support the pocket and contents, so the pocket bag can’t be fully closed or one can’t get in and out of the skirt!

Here is the full thing, front and back

I’m delighted with the hem. I didn’t want to sacrifice any length, so I needed to bind it. Neither the pale blue or dark navy cloth sparked joy on their own for this purpose, but both together felt like a sweet solution, a subtly fussy detail. It took quite a few hours to achieve though. I used patchwork style rotary cutting for accuracy of the strips and fully assembled the border, sewn and pressed before attaching it to the skirt. Worth the effort I think.

A couple of shots of it on me, one demonstrating the pockets of course. My mirror is the wrong shape for taking pictures of full skirts, but full swishy skirts make me happy. I was worried this one might feel too silly, but happily I like it.

All of the above

Shirt? Dress? Coat? All of the above

This started with an experiment in diagonally folded shibori. The upper piece in the picture below.

I don’t recommend it. Diagonal means bias and that as you probably know, is stretchy. Getting this into neat parallel folds was NOT EASY. However, I bloody mindedly pursuaded it. I cut a large square from wide linen, heavy end of shirt weight and lovely quality. If I remember correctly, I folded the corners to the middle, then pleated it up on the bias and pegged it to hold, aiming for minimal resist. Grr. Big struggle to get it neat. There was a narrow strip left which I simply concertina pleated on the weft grain. That is where the finer stripes came from.

The bias experiment did make an interesting piece of fabric though. It was dyed all pegged up and then re dipped after the first lot had oxidised. Hence blue on blue rather than blue on white.

The dyeing happened back in about Feb 19. A few months ago I was frustrated with sewing fine silk and decided it was time for some nice friendly linen. I got this out and pressed it. Then got sick and hung it in the corridor. It made it to the cutting table a few weeks ago and then languished again. I changed my mind several times as to what I would cut from it. I was going to make a dress, but didn’t want anything too similar to the other things I’ve made from indigo shibori. I didn’t want a plain shirt. I ended up with a skirted shirt, a shirt dress, a lightweight coat.

I’m pretty impressed that I managed to get this out of a total of, I think, about 1.1×1.4m of fabric, plus a little plain dyed lesser quality linen for facings. Golly, can that be right? The back and sleeves did need to be pieced, but some good came of that. The bodice back became more interesting and gave me seams for shaping.

The sleeve piecing gave me an easy option for the vents- just leave part of the vertical piecing seam unsewn, press open and hem/fell.

There was rather too much inside out, upside down-ness during construction. Some got fixed, some didn’t.

Of course I put pockets on it. I forgot to put the label on the yoke facing as usual, so it went on one pocket instead. I was lazy. I haven’t given it a final press before taking these pictures, it’s only had construction pressing. I quite like the relaxed look of slightly rumpled linen.

Here it is on. Back and front

I really like it. It has 18thC frock coat overtones. Vaguely piratical. I’m thinking this shape would be nice in some lightweight coating I have in stash. I’ve been nice to future me and taken a pattern of the bodice adjustments before assembly. Pretty happy now that I did that.

 

 

Dyeing with Rosemary

This is yesterday’s other dyeing adventure. I took a biggish rosemary bush out of my garden, so I opportunistically had a go at dyeing with it. I’m not any kind of expert here, just sharing my experiment.

Here is about 3L of loosely packed rosemary leaves covered with cold water.

That sat for a day, then got put in a big stainless steel pot  and warmed a few times over the following couple of days. Then I simmered it gently for half an hour and strained out the solids. There was some colour in the water, but not a lot. I tried dyeing anyway ’cause I’d got that far. I must say, the smell of that much warm rosemary was amazing. It ended up smelling like a cross between honey and eucalyptus oil. Mostly pleasant but a bit strange. Below is a pic of the bath not long after the materials were added.

My small white wool sample (pre mordanted with alum) took colour quite well. Not a wonderfully bright result or a very exciting hue but it is definitely coloured.

The silk (below) took colour, but not as well as the wool

Linen (below) took barely any colour at all, though personally, I would rather wear that pale cream than dead white.

Then I had an idea and prepared a folded shibori piece (silk) with the thought of refolding it and putting it through a different dye bath later. Indigo if we ever do that again (hope so, I am enamoured). It’s subtle but definitely patterned.

 

re loading for linkage:

Avocado dyeing

Long time no blog. I’ve been working on things that are not what I usually put here, but some could well come here so I now have a backlog of posts. Anyway, I spent yesterday on two lots of natural dyeing experiments. This is one. I read that one could dye with the skins and pits of avocados. So I started saving them. I just cleaned them off and left them in an open bowl to dry. Having filled the bowl, it was time to have a go.

This is the dye bath not long after the materials were added. To prepare the dyebath, I put the dried skins and pits into a stainless steel pot and poured warm water over to barely cover. I left this to sit for a couple of days, warmed it a few times but never boiled it. Then I strained out the solids, added the textiles and warmed it again.

The results after a few hours in the bath, then rinsed, dried and ironed.

The silk came out the darkest colour, and that not very dark, or as pink as I hoped. Silk crepe, prewashed. I started with two pieces, one pre mordanted with alum, on unmordanted. The mordant didn’t seem to make a difference with either the silk or linen.

Linen took a little colour, but very little. It’s a pretty blush pink though.

Wool took almost no colour even though it was pre mordanted. This surprised me.

I had read that pH can affect the colour and that adding bicarb might help to achieve pink over brown. So I tried this after the first lot of things were out. Well no. Adding bicarb made the bath very brown. Interestingly, this reversed when I added a slosh of vinegar. Below left to right: original bath, with vinegar added (no noticeable change), with bicarb added.

This was quite fun to do and I learned some things even if the results were not as good as I hoped. I wonder whether fresh or frozen material would give different results to dried?

Eric the Kimono Robe

Eric the half a bee is now a whole bee and even more recently has taken up his destiny on the back of a robe. All this will make more sense when I write the first half of this post about the shibori and dyeing. I’m writing it backwards ’cause I’m all excited about the finished product:

From the front:

When starting to design things for our last indigo dyeing day, I definitely wanted to have another try at stitched resist. I decided to do a bee after learning that one could do a folded shibori that delivered hexagons, reminiscent of course of honeycomb.  I also watched some youtube videos on stitched shibori and learned that it is often done folded in half. Hence half a bee was the thing. I was thoroughly amused.

My hexagons didn’t come out quite the way I wanted. I’m apparently too good at preparing fabric to resist dye. Part of this is that I think I’ve been too ambitious in the amount of fabric per parcel. So I thought I’d emphasise the hexagons on one of the pockets:

I’m utterly delighted in how well Eric himself came out:

There was a lot of slight redesign in the process of making up the robe. One of these was having made the neck cutout too small, so the first time I tried it on it didn’t sit at all well. After some minor panic late at night and some slow thinking, I figured out that I needed to unpick the neck band, increase the neck opening, extend the neckband and reassemble. Which worked just fine to fix the problem. Whew.

The robe has pockets, belt loops, a hanging loop and a deep facing across the shoulders from shoulder blade to below bust. The latter for warmth, structure, longevity and support of the precious bee design.

Here it is being modeled:

Indigo Cardigan

Indigo dyeing on the weekend went really well. We successfully resurrected a 7mth old dyebath and dyed a great many things blue. I’m sure I’ll share more of them with you later, but I’ll start with the results on the grey cardigan from my last post.

This cardigan, folded and pegged

 

After a spell in the dyebath, turned out like this:

 

The positioning of the paler sections isn’t maximum flattering but the overall thing is really appealing. I’m very pleased.

A close up of the fastenings. The loops are made of leftover yarn from the indigo shawl. The buttons are from an old waistcoat that belonged to my Nana.

I’m delighted with it. Very comfy, good sleeve length. In a perfect world I’d have cut the centre front points a little lower and taken in the side seams at bust level a little more. I still love it. It’s a tidy, fairly elegant example of resist dyeing and pretty much what I was hoping for.

 

 

Indigo Shawl

One of the things I popped in the indigo dye bath last August, was a 100g hank of Bendigo Woolen Mills undyed laceweight merino yarn. I was in need of a craft project for travelling, and after a little searching, thought I would have a go at the Stormy waters shawl  from Life is Cozy.

When winding the yarn from skein to ball, I found it had been a little felted during the dyeing. This made the winding off process much more effortful than it ought to have been. I had to haul the yarn off the skein and wind it up in two separate processes. The yarn has stayed rather grabby. Enough so that it held the shape of the winding down to the last 5g.

 

I found the knitting a bit challenging. I hadn’t given the matter much thought, but this was in fact my first project in lace weight yarn. The early section is rich in errors, including several dropped stitches that had to be sewn back together. Much of my trouble came from the stitches crossing over each other as they were pushed along the needle. As the knitting advanced, I found it easier to read the work and identify these crossings as I came to them. The pattern turned out to be just a little too complicated for travelling. Too much needing to refer to the pattern and hard to remember where I was up to. Oh well. I got it done after returning home.

Here it is before and after blocking. I’m a bit amazed how much it grew.

 

and detail shots of the same, showing the improvement in definition of the stitches. This is only the second knitting project I’ve wet blocked, so I’m still pretty amazed by the changes.

 

Here is a shot of it on, briefly. Again I’ve made something in advance of the appropriate season for wearing. I like it. The striped lace pattern gives it some interest without being too girly. The colour is fabulous. The grabby nature of the yarn might help it stay in place during wear.  Tee hee, I haven’t sewn the ends in! I’ll do that after I post this.

I’ve gone and blocked my selfie mirror with a treadle sewing machine and cabinet, displaced by my new brewing fridge. Sigh. It needs to move, hopefully to someone else’s house after being swapped for some money.

 

Indigo Kimono Jacket

Yes. Yet more indigo shibori. This lot is ultra fine ramie, dyed two years ago in a class run by the lovely Andrea Taylor  (Bittern by the Bug) through the excellent craft shop Opendrawer.

The floaty, transparent dyed lengths back when they were done. Foreground then background.

Most of these have been combined into a square boxy cut kimono jacket. I mean to wear it as an overshirt, either for slight warmth or as an anti-sun garment. Like a shawl that stays on more easily. The last and palest length might become a petticoat? perhaps?

The body, sleeves and neck band are simple rectangles except for the gentle neck cut out.

A detail shot of some of the patterns. Such fun. The neck band was a strip run (rather inexpertly and unevenly) through a smocking pleater and gathered up tightly before dyeing. Said neck band also has a strip of shirt weight plain white linen as interfacing.

A single button fastening. It needed some kind of reinforcing for the loop attachment and I hadn’t put a label on yet. The machine stitching looks rather coarse at this enlarged scale.

It’s not my most flattering garment but it feels lovely and floaty. Worn today with my comfiest but rather worn trousers.

Indigo Heffalumps

Another product of the indigo dyeing day a few months back. Not sashiko this time, just a plain overdye of what was cream coloured fine cotton voile, heavily embroidered with elephants, or as I have called them for years, “heffalumps”. Happily, the embroidery turned out to also be cotton.

The lumps of the heffalumps caused a few problems in the stitching. Lumpy fine voile, aieee. I persevered and got it done though.

The resulting shirt dress is intended as a lightweight anti sun garment. It could be worn as a tunic though. It’s a bit short for me to be comfy wearing it as a dress!

Here it is flung over what I happened to have on. I’m spending most of today brewing. I absolutely love the colour.

Blooper reel:
I’m quite pleased with the collar, or I was before I realised that the frill ended up different depths on each side.

I managed to cut all the pieces with the elephants the right way up, except the sleeves, sigh.

The dye coverage isn’t quite even, and to make that worse, I managed to sew the back skirt panel wrongside out. At least it’s the back!

Fastenings:
I kept the buttonholes away from the bulk of the waist seam, and put a little press stud in so it will still close neatly. It also has the loop and button trick for bringing in the fit if I want.

Fully closed and on me to show the fit.

Not quite by accident, it’s a lovely length to wear over the Tardis dress.

Indigo Spots / Accidental Tardis

The next piece made up from the last indigo dyeing day contained unexpected tardis qualities! I really didn’t intend the tardis look, and didn’t see it developing until the skirt was on the bodice.

It started as 2 metres of fine linen, folded in half widthways, then concertina folds one way, and the other. A resist disk was placed top and bottom. I don’t have a proper “before” photo because those ties were replaced by clamps before it went in the dyebath. Pity, a friend dubbed this the “madly flapping dove”, which name I love.

Anyway, this is how the dyed fabric came out:

It seemed to want to be a sundress. Who was I to argue? I did put quite some care into the cutting, including paying attention to the placement of the pattern elements.

The bodice is a slightly altered version of this. My bit of pattern sneaking has paid off. The skirt is in two layers. The fabric is so fine that it needed lining anyway, so I decided to make the hem more interesting. Both layers have hem facings and the bodice is lined, all from the linen scrap box.

Again it’s made as a drop over the head number. I’ve used another variation of my side front fastening to close the fit.

I’m ruddy delighted with it. The fit is lovely, as is the length. It feels wonderful on, and it accidentally looks rather Tardis like! I’ll take that as a feature rather than a bug.