Shibori and Indigo

So I have been totally hankering to dye with indigo for a while now, and finally finally did it!  I got the Jacquard kit and it is really easy and seems to last indefinitely about two weeks and a lot of items dyed.  

 We wrapped, folded, twisted

 glued, dipped, swirled...

 and came up with a ton of beautiful linens and shirts!

 My kids just couldn't wrap their head around only using blue, when clearly tie-dye has so many more color options, so I also grabbed a tie-dye kit for them to work on, so we had a very colorful textile based play-date.

The fall-out is that there are no safe whites in the house any more.  I found one more shirt, this was done with the blue gel elmer's glue as a resist then dip dyed.

I was washing sheets yesterday and started eye-ing them as well, but haven't got the guts just yet to do something that dramatic (after using the vat of dye a lot already!), but maybe a few pillowcases....

 Scooter posing with my beautiful dropcloth... some Pollack printing, tie-dying, shibori and house painting make for a work of art in itself!

 Update:  I did pull together a few pillow cases from the fabric I dyed... I love adding them to the bed!
also, just some notes on this process.  Believe in the resist.  The first batch (biggest by far), V and I were a little nervous, as they looked SOOOO dark, and it was so much fun, we basically dipped fairly quickly (20-30 seconds) and after rinsing and everything, I think they definitely could do with some more dye.  The dark pillow on the bed was left in for about 5 minutes and then dried angiven 5 more min, plus I really worked the dye into the fabric as much as I could (that one with the polka dots as well).  and I love the color even more!

AAAnd I found my shea butter soap recipe so am putting it here so I hope not to loose it again!  I made my first batch this year today...

I did it with the red palm oil from TJs and misread the recipe and put in a bit too much of the palm oil... I did try to fish some out, but it was mostly all melted and mixed, so instead of 12 oz, I probably had at least 17... I dialed the olive oil back since it was the last oil I added, but we'll see if it works out.  Since it was so orangey, I made a citrus (Tangerine, Lemon, Orange, lemongrass) and cedar bar.

Next batch for this year, 9/21 was made with half sandalwood amyris with some avocado oil (topped with a little basil), and all of the bars in the heart and square molds are basil tangerine lime. I split one batch of the shea butter soap.

end of summer projects

City shorts with some of my current favorite fabric, I also made myself a scout tee with it!

Grace loves these shorts and wears them whenever she has them!  We left them at Grandma Terri's house and I had been looking for them.  We were so happy when she sent them to us!

This is my first scout tee, a cool woven t-shirt pattern!  I have some shot cotton here, it's very nice and soft, I also love the one with the above fabric, but don't have any pictures yet.  I made the sleeves with the cotton-linen blend that is so very nice, but it needed some stitch reinforcing as it pulled out of the stitches with its first washing.  I've reinforced it and hopefully it will hold now.

I inadvertently bought the same shot cotton for the dress/tunic for Grace below.  It's from the Japanese sewing book "lesson Plan", and I made my big 5/almost 6 year old the 120 cm an it fits her like a sweet dress.  These aren't the best pictures, but it looks very sweet on her.

and for O... after months of asking that I make him a "Sachel" by which he meant something a bit more like this bandoleer, I finally pulled something together and he loves it (though wishes it was a bit wider in the middle).

It has pockets on both sides and a water bottle holder at the bottom, and looks very cool.  He is happy that my idea for pencil holders look like bullet holders.

and for another project... sun prints!  We collected some big algae kelp during a weekday visit to pacific city, and then did some solar prints at home!

I thought they were wonderful fun, but the kids, in part because the dye is pretty stinky, had a shorter attention span for this project.  Owen did make a wonderful dish towel.  

everyone enjoyed the finished products!

Visit with Grandma Mary

a manicure by Grace (silver sparkles for Great-Grandma!).

She has amazing hands, I just love them!

a game of War with Owen and Grace, Grandma totally won the game, inspite of Owen's smack talk.  And finally Owen's selfie with Great-Grandma.  This sort of cracks me up and fills up my heart.