Detail from collage sketch

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Indigo!

I am currently having a love affair with indigo dye! A few friends and I dyed with indigo for the first time today. I prepped the dye vat yesterday with a few simple ingredients and instructions from Dharma Trading. Using the pre-reduced indigo crystals was far less complicated then making a dye bath from natural indigo. There is chemical magical in this process. The fabric is a yellow-green color for the first few seconds out of the dye bath;however, as the dye oxidizes, the blue begins to appear! Deep shades of blue are achieved by dipping the fabric into the dye multiple times. Photos are below. Hopefully more to come from this process!