Dye Another Day:

[mightyjesse]

For anyone who was wondering what I did last night, I was at TRH home teaching them all about making messes!

(I had so much fun explaining this at work... "DAY ONE! RESIST! DAY TWO! DYE!" "Resistance is futile?" "No, actually, it works quite well!" "Then why are people dying?" "No, not DIE! DYE!" *maniacal laughter*)

We were making Kimonos for them for Boar's Head and experimenting with a rice paste resist technique for dying called tsutsugaki. Sunday night, HrRH and I squeezed rice paste out of a cake decorating tube onto the fabric, which was stretched over frames that were ethnically engineered for me by HRH and Kegslayer. We let our resists dry over night and then EVERYONE, HrRH, HRH, their son Daniel, and I painted the dye onto the fabric within the "coloring book outlines" that HrRH and I had layed out the night before.

The Highnesses showing off their dirty, dirty fingers! (Sorry, Daniel! By the time I got the camera phone out, he'd already gone to bed.)


I made the biggest mess of anyone on my arm... I didn't realize I was leaning on an already-painted part of the fabric. OOPS!


And here are our Kimono backs:

and


Yay! I hope they look as good after we wash them... I'm sure the dyed spots will lighten up some, but right now they look REALLY sharp!

Comments

[itsume.livejournal.com]

That is cool!

[splott.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's fantastic! So this is like the japanese version of batik but without the cracking?
I hope that black dye doesn't come out and contaminate those cool designs, that would be a terrible shame. What's it made of?

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Correct... This is very similar to batik. The japanese did batik with wax, but that form fell out of usage in about 1100 CE and was eventually replaced by the rice paste version in 1600ish. On the finished product, it's very difficult to tell WHAT was used because all the resist gets washed out.

We used muslin fabric, home-made rice paste resist, and procyon vinyl sulphon dye with a lye chemical fixer.

[splott.livejournal.com]

Very cool. :)

So it's a chemical dye, good, that certainly sounds safe.
Post another pic when it's washed out! :)

[fencert.livejournal.com]

Zowie! That is super cool.

[lazygarden.livejournal.com]

Looks fantastic :)

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

SPIFFY. No, seriously, that almost makes me want to wear a kimono.

...Almost.

[eithni.livejournal.com]

Squee! So cool. :)