Shibori, K, and Me

A few weeks ago, I spent a fun weekend with my college friends, K. She lives over an hour away- too far for getting together as often as we'd like. We have a great time going to see art, making art, and just hanging out. One of our activities this time was shibori. That's Japanese fabric dying with indigo. 

We prepared our cotton fabric by securing it with rubber bands or tying it with string- around stones, folded, fanned, scrunched, bunched…

We then dipped each piece in the bucket of indigo dye, moving the bundle with our gloved hands. (*Note, if you try this at home, make sure your glove doesn't have even the tiniest hole. My index finger was blue for a week! K used different gloves…her blue thumb lasted for days too.)

We strung up a make shift clothes line in our garage studio to let our fabric, t shirts, onesies, (and even a full-sized table cloth!) dry. And then we stood back to admire our work.

The one below was a gray t shirt- it took the dye a little differently…

We loved how each piece was a bit of a surprise when we opened it- with more practice, maybe our results would be a bit more predictable.

K had some onesies on hand- I dyed this one twice so the circles on the bottom half are more subtle than the larger one on the top.

I sewed my shibori squares to make napkins, complete with mitered corners.

And I found some napkins at a thrift store (Value Village) to add to the mix. I think they'll look great with my plain white dishes and some bright yellow daffodils for our Easter table.

Thanks K, it was a fun and productive weekend. :D

Make it a Wonderful Day!