1-2-3 Blue-2-3

For Christmas I received a great pressie, Michel Garcia's indigo dyeing workshop DVD. Since then I've watched it numerous times and I've been waiting to try his 1-2-3 indigo vat for ages but it took me a while to gather up the materials, the ingredients (and the time!) to give this a go.
The ingredients list isn't particularly extensive - indigo, calcium hydroxide and fructose. The equipment list isn't exactly challenging either - just the usual pots and pans, stirrers and so on. I did get hold of some glass marbles - recommended by Michel for helping the indigo to combine with the alkaline calcium hydroxide and the water, but other than that my only additional piece of kit was a slow cooker that my in-laws kindly gave me as they weren't using it.

So how did it go?

Well, it was pretty straightforward. The 1-2-3 refers to the relative proportions of indigo, calcium and fructose to use, so I duly measured out my ingredients.

I combined the indigo and calcium, shaking them up (with the lid on!) with some glass marbles.

Next came the vat, using the fructose to de-oxygenate the vat. A slightly nervous wait as the vat warmed and (fingers crossed) turned that familiar clear, greeny-yellow with the oil-on-water surface.

and there was the reassuring indigo flower (the blue-y foam on the water surface).

All set!

Folding and clamping some pfd (prepared for dyeing) cotton fabric...(yes, these are bag clips from the £1 shop!)...

Using an old kitchen sieve to immerse the clamped fabrics in the vat. The sieve stops the fabric from touching any sludgy bits of indigo that may be lurking in the bottom of the vat.

A quick last test of the vat (just blotting paper to check the colour).

And in they go...

Cover and keep at around 50c for about 10 mins

Remove from the vat....

And watch the colour develop...

Remove the clamps...

Rinse and dry....

Not bad for my first 1-2-3 vat!

(Note: I've since repeated this exercise after leaving the vat for a couple of days then refreshing it by warming it up. The colours were much deeper and more of a true indigo blue).

I see lots more 1-2-3'ing in my future!

Beautiful blanks - dyeing at Purl City Yarns

Some super dyeing with my lovely students at one of my favourite venues, Purl City Yarns. Blank canvas dyeing is always fun as students get really creative with their colours and patterns! I can't wait to see the socks knitted from these beauties....

Funky felt!

More fun with the year 10s!

The groups got stuck into felting with some real gusto! The trickiest thing was keeping them supplied with wool!

Lots of lovely felted pictures, names and patterns and even some funky, brightly coloured hair falls (aka woolly dreadlocks)......

Super screenprints!

It's always great when I get to work with textile students and this summer I had the opportunity to work with two enthusiastic groups of Year 10s.

We had two topics to play with, screenprinting and felt making. The students produced some great pieces and it was great to see them experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what they could do with multi-colours, layering, multiple prints and positive/negative printing. Although the first prints were a little tentative, the students quickly developed confidence and their prints were soon bursting with colour and life. By the end of the sessions there were some stunning results with students making their own stencils and really developing their understanding of the processes.

Screenprinting can be expensive but I thought I'd share a few tips on keeping costs down...


Cheap stencil materials
For anyone who fancies having a go at screenprinting without investing a lot in materials and equipment, we used old plastic document wallets to cut out washable, re-useable stencils. The plastic was just thick enough to give great definition to the prints but was easy to cut accurately with a craft knife and was quick to clean and re-use. You can also buy cheap packs of document wallets from £1 shops, Wilkinson's and stationery shops. One pack is enough for quite a few stencils.

I found plenty of interesting images by searching for "silhouettes" or "free templates" on google. Simple designs with bold outlines are ideal for this technique and once students have had a bit of practice it will give them lots of ideas for their own designs.

Cheapy squeegees
As some of our designs were quite small, the squeegees were a bit too big to allow small images to be added to a print. And the answer? Old credit-card style plastic loyalty cards! (I don't recommend actual credit/debit cards even if they are out of date!). The bendier cards are best and they proved very effective at giving good ink penetration whilst being easy to manage and get the pressure right, too.

Printing inks
We used screenprinting inks on cotton fabric, but you could use thickened procion mx dyes as an alternative. Any leftover dyes will then double up for later dyeing experiments such as tie-dye, shibori, shaving cream and snow-dyeing.

Fabrics
Old cotton t-shirts or shirts are great to print on. Use as they are or upcycle by cutting them up to make smaller pieces that can be used to embellish bags, clothes, accessories etc.

Show and Tell time...

It's always great when I teach dyeing workshops, but even better when I get to see what my lovely students make with their dyed yarn. At the moment we're updating the gallery on our website so I thought I'd post some pics here in the meantime. First up one of the projects shared while we were at Woolfest....

See the laceweight skein on the right of this picture?

Here it is wound onto a ball

and being knitted into a beautiful lacy scarf

Thanks Joyce!

(Keep your eyes peeled for more of your shared projects - and if you have made something with our yarn or dyes, email me a piccie or two or a link to your blog and I'd be happy to feature it :-)  )