Indigo Dye Day

tie dyed t-shirt

tie dyed t-shirt 2

indigo dyed yarn, solid and space dyed

indigo dyed tea towel.

Today the West Side Weaving Group had an indigo dyeing day. It was a perfect day outdoors, which made it all the more successful. Indigo dyeing is more like an chemical experiment than anything else and involves mixing the dye, adding lye to reduce the oxygen content of the dye, dipping pre-soaked items into a pot that is generally bright chartreuse green with a blue scum, allowing the item to soak up the dye and then removing it from the dye and watching it turn from bright green to blue as the air hits it. It's pretty magical. Tie dyeing just adds to the fun since you can't really predict what the results will be.

There were nine of us dyeing and once the dye pots were made up, it was interesting to watch the various approaches to the preparation of the items to be dyed. Several of us were just randomly dyeing items, others had a directed goal for the items they dyed such as quilt squares for sashiko quilting, yarn for a specific weaving or knitting project. Several of the ladies had brought packages of tea towels, handkerchiefs and plain white napkins so once everybody had dyed what they had brought, we had extra items to play with which made for a lot of "created" techniques and a sharing of folding and tieing techniques.

By the end of the day, most of us were spotted with blue, and had blue tinged hands in spite of gloves and aprons but everyone agreed the results were worth it.