Monday, September 20, 2010

Natural Dyeing

Today I learned about natural dying techniques in Fibre 2D. Our first project is to dye some cotton swatches and make two silk scarves. The process is rather long and involved, as we have to roll up the material in plastic and essentially let the die release over time as the material decomposes.

Some of the suggested dye sources were tea bags, flowers, berries, leaves and rusty objects. I couldn't find any rusty objects, but there were plenty at school. While I'm not sure how the leaves will turn out, the berries definitely did the trick! I also made a cup of raspberry tea in the morning to make sure I had a tea bag handy.


Natural dye materials

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like an interesting process, I do hope you will show us some of the finished dye work.

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  2. I agree with Marlene! It does sound like an interesting process and fun too! I also hope you will show us the finished dye work!!

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  3. Sounds like fun. I hope you take pictures of the scarf when done, I'd be curious to see how it turns out!

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  4. I'm curious to see how it will turn out too guys! I'll bring my real camera on Monday. There is also a vat of indigo dye that we can use in case things don't turn out very well. I'm guessing it can hide a lot of flaws!

    The fun thing about natural dyeing is that is really fast and easy to do - I'm sure you guys could give it a go :-)

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  5. Very interesting. Sounds like a lot of work too.

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  6. The actual process goes by pretty fast Sully. It's the waiting that is the hardest part, I think!

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