More stars

I got up yesterday morning and tie-dyed three more stars. One came out with nasty fire-spotting – some of the dye didn’t dissolve completely, resulting in dark blobs and speckles where the concentrated dye sludge touched the shirt. However, two came out beautifully, one spectacularly so:

Of course the rainbow on cobalt blue shirt is the best I’ve done, but the red star isn’t shabby either. The rainbow one is a gift for my sister-in-law, the red star I’ll keep for myself.

I’m now fascinated by the star motifs and think I will try folding and dyeing a bunch of them over the next few weeks. I’m hoping I can get a better understanding of the technique – how to create accents, control the points of the stars, choose color schemes, etc. Debating whether to use T-shirts or pieces of muslin – the muslin would be cheaper, but the T-shirts would make great gifts. Of course, I’m not sure I know two dozen people who need a starburst tie-dye T-shirt, so perhaps the muslin would be better after all!

The slate for this week mostly consists of draping muslins. I have dyed several yards of muslin in fiery colors, and am hoping to drape the “flames” design from my last blog post. The question is whether to drape it as a princess dress or a shift. I have the feeling that the princess design is necessary to get the requisite fullness at the bottom, especially since I am working with narrow fabric – so I will try that first. I fully expect to get stuck somewhere along the way, but I am going to see Sharon on Saturday, so my intent is to get as far as I can on my own. Then I can ask her to troubleshoot my errors, rather than starting from square one. This makes the most efficient use of our limited time together.

I’m also planning to brainstorm some more designs, this time developing each design a bit more fully before proceeding to the next one. Fifteen minutes per design instead of three, and analyze the design afterwards according to the principles of two and three dimensional design, making changes as needed. The intent here is not to brainstorm lots of new ideas quickly (which is what the three-minute version of Design Poker is all about) but to take a single idea and develop it more fully. I’ll probably base the designs on some of the design concepts I brainstormed in the last few rounds of Design Poker – but who knows, I may come up with some new ones!