Dippy
Published On: August 26, 2016

So on the Saturday after the book launch, I decided I deserved a little break, and signed up for an indigo class at a local fiber studio.  I was super excited, and I’ve always been the advance prep sort, so I decided I’d snag some napkins and do a bit of work ahead of time (as always, amazon links are affiliate links).

0 copyI went, I dyed, and…eh.  I don’t know if it was because I was tired from the launch or because it was hot or something else, but I wasn’t all that thrilled with the results.  The color was super light, and the patterns were not distinct, and I just didn’t care for it.  So I decided to fix it.  I bought an indigo kit, dragged some buckets out of the garage, and got to work.

1 copyI mixed up the dye and left it to sit.

2 copyI tied up the napkins again (rubber bands people, you need lots and lots and lots of rubber bands) and tossed them in some water to soak.

3 copyThen I oh so gently nestled the napkins into the dye.  It looked inky and dark when they went in.

4 copyBut after just a moment it cleared up and went bright, celery green.

5 copyI let it sit for a while (cough, overnight, but some lovely folks online have told me that was unnecessary and a few minutes would do just as well) then pulled everything to get some air (and watch the show as they went from green to blue in the space of a moment or two).

6 copyBack in the bucket for a second dip (I was fascinated to see the bits that had turned a lovely blue in the air went back to green, albeit darker green, once they were in the dye again).

7 copyThen out again for another battle with the air (I left them out for a good long time, like an hour, to make sure the bound up bits got air too).

I did this for a total of four dip/air cycles.  By that time, they’d stopped turning green when they went back in the dye, and the dye itself looked blue instead of green too, so I decided I’d likely gotten as much out of it as I could.

I hosed the ever living crap out of them while they were still bundled up (here’s where I say seriously nice things about having a pressure washer…forget cleaning the fence, this is much more fun), left them in the sun for a few hours to get mostly dry, then snipped the rubber bands.  And that’s where we’ll pick up next time!

Mailing List

Want to hear when a new pattern comes out or something fun is going on? Sign up below!

Patreon

Want to support the content I create, get nifty bonus material for some of my favorite patterns, or get every new release delivered right to your inbox? Head over to patreon and sign up!

Search
Archives