Last weekend we had a busy time at my place! Along with negotiating the torrential downpours and horizontal lashes of rain, we attempted an ambitious combination of mammoth art projects, voting in our national elections, and marching up Queen St with our fellow Aucklanders for the global People's Climate March.
One of my art projects was to try peg dyeing. This is like Japanese tie dyeing, but instead of using string, you use plastic clothes pegs to create the areas that block the dye from getting into the fabric. Depending on the shape of the connecting surfaces on the pegs you use, you get different shaped patterns. I discovered this by accident, and have been really enjoying the little squares created by my flat pegs.
So basically all you do, is fan-fold your fabric/garment; I folded mine on the diagonal so that the squares would become diamonds. The narrower your folds are the closer together the pattern will be. Once you have your folded strip of fabric, you attach the pegs along each side. Again, you can experiment with this and attach the pegs in different ways to create different pattern layouts. Here's mine soaking in water before going into the dye bath.
When the fabric is finished dyeing, out it comes and you hold back your impatience while dutifully rinsing all the colour out, keeping the pegs intact until the water runs pretty much clear. Finally getting to take off all the pegs and see how your pattern turned out is the most exciting bit!
Next time I'll share my first experiment with batik...
~ Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment