The Indigo Vat

I finally got around to making up the indigo vat.  At first I thought I'd screwed it up.  Where was the bloom?  What is it supposed to look like?  I am a tentative explorer, and since I am mostly self-taught, I have to rely on sheer moxy.  What the hell, I thought, if it doesn't have a "bloom", maybe it will still work.  So I over-dyed a very blah April Cornell smock coat I found at Ragfinery, and then did the remaining yardage of a beautiful piece of bamboo/cotton I bought from Dharma Trading.  Yes, ugly yellow green and then, viola!, dark dark dark indigo after about 10 minutes in the air.  And I still have a question about dyes...just how clear does the rinse water have to run before you put it in the machine and wash the hell out of it?  I never know, and by the rinse stage my back is usually screaming and I'm tired of being in the dank basement.  But on the other hand, I won't have the luxury of a huge cement double sink to use when we sell this house and move to a smaller one.  I love the result of dying cloth. Since I approach it with the same attitude I do travel, I have few expectations.  Therefore, I am seldom disappointed.  Fun fun fun.  I will post photos.

Oh, and the "bloom"?  It showed up as soon as I started moving the dye bath around...introducing oxygen into it.  I get it, and I'm not quite as intimidated as I was when I started.

Day one:

Formerly a blah beige April Cornell jacket
in a nicely worn linen.  Some streaks, but
I kind of like that.

2 1/2 yards of bamboo/cotton.  The dots are spots
of light from a disco ball in the garden.  They
are not on the fabric.

Day two:

Linen/cotton fabric tied with cotton twine.

I began to untie the cotton twine.

3 yards of linen/cotton.  The fabric is still
wet.  After washing and drying, the
color is a softer blue.

The Jacket Projects

And another jacket.  Materials:  indigo dyed hand spun, hand woven cotton from a Lienten village in northern Laos, 2003.  The fabric is very thick with indigo and not easy to work with.  The white hand woven cotton is from Japan, katazome, which is a resist paste of indigo, either block printed or done free hand, here in a butterfly design.  This fabric is about the same weight and texture as the dark blue.  The collar is a 50/50 silk cotton I picked up in Myanmar a couple of years ago.  The design is a modified kimono style.  It has irregular shaped pockets and "picking", or sashiko, a Japanese running stitch.  I used DMC perle cotton white for the sashiko.

Next project is to embroider my old Levi jacket.  I am doing scroll work, a moon and Tibetan clouds.

Jackets

The jacket:  I used an Indonesian tube skirt from Flores for the body, back and front, and part of the sleeves.  For the collar, I used a very old silk hand woven partial pha sin from Laos that was part of a phasin that had been cobbled together.  I took the old skirt apart and salvaged the pieces.  The very dark pieces near the bottom of the sleeves are from pieces left over from another old phasin, hand woven with indigo dyed threads.  The large sections of the sleeves is a skirt border, old, silk, from Laos.  It felt good to use all the small sections and pieces I have been saving because the seem to precious to just throw away.  This jacket came out beautifully and I will wear it a lot, I'm sure.  I did have to shorten the sleeves a bit, and did that by adding black rayon/linen to the reverse sides of the sleeves, and turning up the cuffs a bit.  I also added pockets.  It's quite a coat!

New Project...the poem

Travel
by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Partial poem in red DMC 3 strand
on an antique linen tea towel

Now for the illustrations

done with the jacket

The finished jacket:

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As finished as finished can be

the back

 It's as finished as finished will be for now.  I need to move on to other projects...I'm starting on some very old heavy linen and doing a poem with illustration.  And illustration is never my strong suit but I just have a bug up my butt about embroidery right now.  I also found a stash of antique brass sequins that used to be on one of my dance costumes.  Glad I didn't get rid of those in my purging.  I love metal shiny things, I guess that's why.  I am also working on using the silk chiffon burn-out piece I bought from Rebecca years ago when I thought maybe Lise would want it for her wedding dress.  It will start to yellow with age, and I will never make anything from it that I will wear, so I am combining it with a lovely little Edwardian bodice I got a while back from Etsy or Ebay or somewhere...cheap.  I will post photos.  And I completed two pair of earrings that I am quite proud of.  A stretch for me.

Sterling silver Turkoman beads with sterling quality
Afghani drops.  The one on the left has a tiny
turquoise and carnelian bead.  Sterling round
spacer beads as accents.

Sterling silver Lao butterfly buttons
with sterling content Afghani
drops.

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Return to Embroidery

Now that the hectic holiday season is over I am back at my embroidery. I have a new chair, which helps, and I'm doing some of my work in the daytime, which is HUGE! Better light, better back, better inspiration and less fatigue. The purple tunic is getting full. I have to remember not to try to do projects on it in very dark colors. They just don't show up. I found some antique linen tea towels, old, heavy linen, and I'm going to do a series of hangings on these. I want to do one for the RL Stevenson poem, Travel. After all, it is what set my mind to travel as a child, hearing my grandmother and then my mother, reciting the poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. So that is my new goal. In the meantime, I have much to do before I go back to SE Asia. I have a mission at Samphan Lane to find some embroidery thread, perhaps silk or rayon, and different buttons, perhaps some nice trims. Who knows what I will find in the rat's nest of alleys and packed lanes? It's taken me two years to think up a valid reason to return there. Now if I can only find it.