Yesterday morning I got the shibori piece tied, and at lunchtime I rushed home to dye it using Lanaset/Sabraset dyes in an immersion dyebath, color “scarlet”. I figured the scarlet would interact with the black to produce a nice rich maroon.
After about 30 minutes in the dyebath I pulled it out and looked at it. The dyebath was only penetrating the top 1/16″ of the folds, and wasn’t getting any deeper into the fabric. Disappointed, I set it aside and went back to work. When I got home from work, I applied some 1% stock solution of Scarlet to one side, and a 1% stock solution of Sun Yellow to the other side of the pulled-up work. I let it soak in briefly, then sealed it in a Ziplock bag and set the dyes in the microwave.
At this point, the correct thing to do would have been to wait a day or two for it to dry, then remove the ties. However, I’m not particularly encumbered by patience, so I very carefully cut the ties, rinsed out the fabric, and pressed it dry.
And here are the results:
By and large I like the results, especially the back side of the first one, where the combination of the two dye colors and the underlying pattern makes for a very pretty, visually rich fabric. (The front side, with the high-contrast white, looks a little too “busy”, but I still love it.) The other ones look interesting – not at all what I had planned, but interesting. I need to do some more calculated experiments so I understand how the folds affect the dyeing.
This was enough of a success/interesting enough that I plan to do more with woven shibori…tonight I will start drafting up another batch of tests, to be woven up later this week.
Drawing and painting are on hiatus at the moment, until I’m less preoccupied with my recent loss – I haven’t the attention span/concentration to work on wholly new things at the moment. I hope to get back to it in a week or two.
It is true that Lanaset doesn’t penetrate very far, which can be good when you want a sharp definition . You can wick the dye into the cloth if it is drier. Cibacron F, a much smaller molecule, will penetrate much farther. If you try a mixed color the different components will travel different distances making the whole thing much more complex.
I also think that you could separate the gathering threads more, at least 1 cm apart, maybe more.
Few have the patience to wait for the bound piece to dry, it takes forever even if you spin it out in the washing machine. If you do use Cibacron make sure you do the wash down before opening to prevent back staining.