Hand Dyed Wine Bottle Drawstring Gift Bags

When I saw Jeni's tutorial for the wine bottle gift bag version of her indispensable and versatile lined drawstring bag pattern, I knew it was the perfect use for my small stash of hand dyed fabric. 

I created these designs in an amazing workshop with Kim Eichler-Messmer on itajime, arashi, and machine sewn shibori indigo dyeing over nine years ago. 

Itajime shibori uses folding and clamping fabric to create resists in interesting patterns. It is easiest for beginners to accomplish with small pieces of fabric, so I dyed mostly fat quarters. This project is ideal for that size fabric. It was meant to be.

Shibori Fabric Dyeing

I was privileged to take a shibori indigo dyeing class a few years ago with Kim Eichler-Messmer. It was such a good time I always intended to do more at home but never seemed to have time. Being stuck at home has this silver lining, among others - the time to experiment with crafts.

I used a simple indigo dye kit I found online. You can see the blue isn't as rich as a real indigo dye, but you might be able to adjust that by overdyeing the pieces or leaving them in longer than I did. The kit comes with a few rubber bands and pieces of wood, and I supplemented with clamps and some acrylic shapes of my own.

The circles in the dark piece were the result of small rubber bands tied around chickpeas, believe it or not.

My attempt at arashi (wrapping fabric with string around a rod of some kind) was interesting. A larger dowel would be better, as it would allow more surface area of the fabric to be exposed directly to the dye. This result reminds me of a Rorschach test.

This was a fun experiment. It's a little messy but a great project to do outside in the summer with kids, if yours have not yet reached the age that crafts with mom are no longer appealing.

To bring the whole project to the quarantine full circle, I plan to use a couple of the pieces to make face masks. A couple of the half yard pieces would be nice whole cloth table runners.

Adventures in Indigo Shibori

I recently had the pleasure of taking a class with Kim Eichler-Messmer, author of Modern Color, on indigo shibori fabric dyeing. It was just a delight. Kim, a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, also teaches private classes at KC Textile Studio. If you have the opportunity to take a class, do it!

 

We learned to make two different types of indigo dye vats, as well as the shirbori technique, including itajime, arashi, and machine sewn. This traditional Japanese dyeing method, which uses  uses clamps, string, and stitching to create resist patterns, creates truly endless design possibilities. I tried a bit of everything, which is the fun of this sort of class.

itajime

 

arashi

 

machine sewn

 

machine sewn

 

itajime

Indigo dyeing is certainly simple enough to do at home, albeit a bit messy. I hope an outdoor indigo party with crafty friends is in my future.

Fabric Dyeing Workshop

There are so many talented ladies in my quilt guild, and this weekend I was privileged to learn from yet another one.  Kim Eichler-Messmer is a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute.  She makes wonderful quilts, many inspired by the midwest landscape, and she uses all her own hand-dyed fabrics.  She generously offered to do a workshop on fabric dyeing for a lucky few guild members (okay, I'll admit, I was sitting next to her at the guild meeting when she had the signup sheet, and I may have taken advantage of that).

We met in her studio space and dove right in.  Kim taught us how to do three different dyeing techniques.  Here are my low water immersion and solid shade dyed fabrics.

Next, Kim showed us how to do a gradation dye.  She uses this technique a lot in her work, and I can see why!  I did a two color gradation from yellow to turquoise.

 Dreamy!

The whole day was such a treat.  Many thanks to Kim for sharing her space and her expertise with us!