Stitch A Day 2017, Day 15

I'm half way through the first month! If you've been following along you'll recognize the overdyed Laura Ashley scrap in the top left. Below that is a piece of percale that I folded, bound and dipped in the indigo vat, known as itajime. It looks dipdyed, but that's just because it's such a small piece of the whole fabric. I'm not sure where the stripe on the right came from. It appears to be a handloomed cotton, probably from India. I'm using a lighter colored thread here, again, leftover poly core cotton used to tie up the hiranui bundles.

Stitch A Day 2017, Day 14

I used a bit of shibori dyed linen left over from a pillow to fill in a long skinny area. The center piece is some Indian ikat fabric that I ordered in blue, but was shipped black. Since it came all the way from India, it seemed a shame to ship it all the way back, so once again, I tossed it into the indigo vat and magically, the black now reads blue. I'm getting a bit bored with the piecing and am a bit itchy to do some decorative stitching. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

A Good Dye at the Indigo Vat

Today was a good day at the indigo vat. That isn't always true. Because the indigo vat is a living, growing, evolving thing every day is a bit different. Factor in the human element of cutting, pressing, folding, stitching, clamping, gathering, and binding before dipping, aerating, rinsing and repeating sometimes dozens of times, and there is a lot of opportunity for unexpected results. And then there are the accompanying issues of losing the bound fabric (or sometimes your glasses) in the depths of the midnight dark vat.

Even though the vat was under-reduced today, I was able to get some results that pleased me. I'd been theoretically wrapping and scrunching and stitching in my mind for a couple of weeks to try to figure out how to get this effect. Then there were about 10 dips, over a four hour period, when I had no idea whether or not it was going to look anything like I envisioned.  And then I ripped open the stitching. It worked. Well, sort of. It's a good start, now I've just got to translate it into a process that works for yardage. 

Stitch A Day 2017, Day 13

I showed a close-up of this section on Day 2 and today I've added a couple of pieces around it. The far left is the scrap of hem from a pair of pants my daughter shortened, the center is a scrap of upholstery fabric left from a client project and on the right are two pieces of ikat. The bottom is a vintage piece of Japanese cotton that I bought years ago at Yoko Japanese Antiques, a wonderful little shop in South Pasadena. (I can't find them on the web, I'll have to drive by one day and see if they're still in business.) The top piece is a modern indian ikat fabric. The old japanese scrap is a beautiful weight and quality. The indian piece is a bit thin and loosely woven.

Stitch A Day 2017, Day 12

Once again I've overdyed a small scrap of cotton I had. This is an old Laura Ashley print from the 80's. Laura Ashley was one of the first designers that got me hooked on prints. Although most of her prints seem a bit dated to me now, a quick dip in the indigo vat makes them work here.  The book "Laura Ashley Style" is a great resource for understanding her use of traditional historic fabrics and seeing how they're interpretted for modern applications. 

Stitch A Day 2017, Day 11

Today I've added a piece of block printed cotton. If you've been following along you might have some sense of where this is, having seen the piece on the right and the piece on the bottom in prior pictures. I'm going to continue photographing close up pictures until I begin the decorative stitchin. Until then, it remains a mystery. To me most of all!

Stitch A Day, 2017: Day 10

Today I added a little scrap of one of my favorite textiles, a serape. It's more serape-inspired, but it definitely makes you think it's a serape, just without the bulk and the propensity to fray faster than you can stitch. The weft yarns are an orangey-pinkie sort of color which relates to another little scrap that you can't see in this photo. At the bottom is another section of the block printed cotton I overdyed in the indigo vat. At the top is a scrap leftover after trimming a pillow cover that had been machine topstitched. I really never, ever throw away any scrap. I have one of these cheap plastic drawer bin things and have one drawer dedicated to bits and bobs. After I trim something I scoop all the scraps into the drawer. I use them almost as quickly as I stuff them in there. 

Stitch A Day, 2017: Day 9

Everything was looking too much the same, so today I found a couple of scraps with more color. On the lower right is a piece of fabric I'd block printed on years ago. It was awfully muddy and drab, so like just about everything in my life that is white, cream or natural, it had a couple of dips in the indigo vat. To my eye, everything looks better after it's met indigo! I'm constantly amazed that no matter what I throw in the vat, it comes out looking better.