NATURAL DYEING
For my natural dyeing assignment I began by doing a lot of research/watching a lot of youtube videos. I came across a girl from Switzerland who dyes yarn and threads in different shades of pink from an avocado. The color “swatches” she shared on her blog were amazing and so beautiful so I decided that this was the plant material I would use.
I picked up my avocados from the market and began peeling and pitting them. Once I had 4 pits & 8 pieces of the outer avocado skin I left everything out to dry overnight. The next morning I boiled the avocado skins and pits until the water turned a pinkish color. Once I removed the wool and linen strips from the water they were a light pink color. But I noticed after the one sample I left as is, it dried to be a brown color overnight. The rest of the samples sat in their designated chemicals overnight and changed various colors.
The wool I dipped into acidic chemicals had much stronger chemicals than the alkaline samples. For instance my wool I left in Iron turned a deep purple/black color overnight.
I found that the colors on my linen samples were much more vibrant than the samples of wool.
Ways I used Water:
Boil water, (grow the avocado in the first place), to rinse and clean the wool, to soak fabrics in chemicals.
I think all of the dirty water I disposed of will go to a water treatment center and get treated as well as go through filters to re-clean it.
SHIBORI DYEING
For the shibori dyeing I washed my fabric then used turmeric and Alum powder to create the color. I decided to change my natural dye to turmeric powder because I was not really impressed with my color range from the Avocado dyes. I saw that one of my classmates had a really beautiful deep orange between the turmeric powder dye and soaking it in alum. I created the circle pattern in the middle of the linen by simply using large rubber bands around different parts of the fabric. I really enjoyed doing the Shibori dyeing. I think its a beautiful way to create a pattern on fabric with natural dyes.
