Iron and Indigo 2

A large piece of probably cotton from the G to G Sale this spring, ripped into equal squares and 3 long pieces, bound with elastics and Indigo dyed.

Should have washed it more, to get out chemicals, not as dark as I hoped for.  Elastics are great for resist dyeing, they actually absorb the indigo dye.  Need to be cut off.

 Two of the squares.  a tool free from a garage sale and square nails from my 1904 house.

These are some of my favorite found, rusted objects, washers,

Most of the quilt lined up on my deck,  I want to wash them all one more time and then I need to learn to use the sewing machine I have owned for 20 years and never used.

Rail road ties are great found objects, they are fairly common along tracks, but they don't lie flat so the rust isn't picked up by the cloth in such a way as to be recognizable.

I am working on that.

Iron and Indigo, mostly indigo

Obsessed with Indigo dyeing since I took a course at Maiwa. I have done indigo dyeing before at various workshops and woad dyeing, even grew my own woad.  But it was always presented as harder than chemical dyeing or at least that is what I took from it.

The Maiwa vat is very simple and works.

Yarn, I was trying for a graduated look and got some but Indigo is such a strong dye it tends to go to the darkest colour.

This is a mohair boucle and it is lovely.  I dipped half the skein and draped it over the edge of the pail, took it out and let it change to blue, then put the whole skein in for a short time.

And I dyed cloth, one edge in each vat and move it back and forth.  This is a length of cotton from the Grandmothers to Grandmothers sale.  Think it's cotton might be a blend but indigo is very cooperative and seems to dye everthing

And Finn sheep fiber for spinning,  this worked as a graduated dyeing.  I want to try spining it to produce a very long graduated 2 ply,  It is  8 oz.

 A couple of experts (hey, they wrote a book) say that when overdying use the indigo last.  So far I have not found it makes a big differance with the rust dyeing.

This piece of fibre (again, probably but not provably cotton) dyed with found rusty objects then overdyed with Indigo

 These pictues are taken mostly on my clothes line.