Shibori Inquires

I received a couple of inquires from art teachers wanting to try Shibori in their classrooms so I thought I'd give a bit more explanation.

On the sampler above I showed the kids several different types of Shibori stitches.  So each student was given a cotton cloth to practice them on.  I bought extremely strong thread in a bright color so it wouldn't break and would be able to be seen after the dye process.

The piece above on the right shows all the stitching that went into the sampler, and the one on the left is after I dipped it in water and pulled all the stings tight and knotted them off for the resist.

Below is one of the samplers from above after taking it thru the indigo dye bath and allowing it to dye.  You need to use seam rippers to take out all the stitching before you can see your design.  I went to JoAnn's with coupons and bought 10 rippers for the kids to share.  Buy the cheapest ones, they work fine.

  

Then these are the two samples from above after I opened and ironed them.

And even though we wore gloves you still get indigo all over you.  It takes a good week to wear off.  I bought pre-reduced indigo crystals, soda ash and thiourea dioxide from Dharma Trading Company, everything you need to start up your own Shibori vat.  I bought a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot to brew it in.  When you go to Dharma's site you can download instructions for how to put the ingredients together.  Good Luck, it was so worth it, and the kids loved the experience.