Well I spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday dyeing yet again. The first project was for my upcoming Shibori swap in February. I decided that I was going to try pole shibori but this time actually do the string method. That of course lasted for about half an hour before giving up and reverting back to the easier method of wrapping the fabric around the pole and scrunching it down upon itself. The idea for the shibori using string is to exert a bit of pressure on the string so that it creates a resist and then scrunch the fabric up the pole as you go. Well I couldn’t budge the fabric so gave up. Maybe I shouldn’t have wrapped the string so tight, I’m not sure and didn’t want to take the time to find out as I don’t have much time to waste.
I did wrap some sinew around the ends of my quick wrap piece to help create a resist there but that was all I did. I decided to over-dye the ecru with black. I was afraid that the black would over-power the ecru so I went lightly with the dye, I shouldn’t have worried as there is more ecru than black.
Wrapped pole with one yard ecru.
Over-dyed pole, bright exposure on camera.
Black and ecru shibori.
I dyed the final colour wheel for my nested round robin quilt. For this colour wheel I did the dark colour wheel using full-strength dye. I’d post a picture but truth to tell the camera makes it look like a medium colour wheel so it seems pointless as I already have one of those posted.
Lastly I did a colour run for my other group’s “Make a Shade” swap. I was disappointed in the results but not surprised. I had thought we were to do a gradation and add an additive (wow, how’s that for a mouthful) in a small amount but no we were to treat this as a make colour run so the result was that a lot of black got added to my boysenberry dye. As a result I’ve mostly black samples as the boysenberry was over-powered. Grey would have been a better choice of colour if I’d known.
Boysenberry-Better Black run, overexposed showing lighter than normal.
I’ve had a real problem with my camera today, it’s making all my rich dark colours lighter than normal, maybe the day is just too overcast and it’s over-compensating…you don’t think it’s my camera skills do you, lol.
Karen
Bunks' Blog 
Your shibori turned out great and your color run looks good as well.
Ohhh I’m impressed. Love the shibori technique. Not one that I have tried, but I really must give it a go. You are tempting me with your wonderful photos to get back into dying again – now just to find time…vbg. Thanks for the inspiration.
Very nice black and ecru shibori!!
the problem you’ve been having with your camera………I used to have the same problem. With me it was the flash, it was washing out the pieces or I’d get a bright area on the picture & it wouldn’t be even. I went out & bought one of the filters that attaches over the flash itself & it seemed to really help.
Love your shibori Karen. I need to try this method of shiboriI need to practice doing overdyeing, I haven’t done that but one time , so much experimenting to do. (g). Your color runs look really good to me.
We at Frost Design in Australia love the black and ecru shibori. In fact we love it so much that we would like to use a photographic image of it as part of an interior design fit-out of the Macquarie bank here in Sydney. What do you think – would you be interested? I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks, Ed