More indigo dyeing and shibori at the Garden Craft Cottage

 

 

 My second workshop at the Garden Craft Cottage was just as much fun as the first one, with the added bonus of us being a bit faster and more confident.

This time we refreshed the dye baths that we had made up last week.  We used two methods for heating up the liquid to between 40 and 45 degrees.  We used an immersion heater for one vat

 

 

but simply added warm water from the kettle to the others and stirred, using a thermometer to check the temperature.

Then, we tested for alkalinity.  You can use a meter and try for a pH of 10 to 11, but we tested to see if it felt soapy or slippery with our fingers.  When it didn't feel right, we added a teaspoon of caustic soda at a time, stirring well after each addition and retesting. ( We rinsed our fingers in water after each test, and in water with vinegar after the final test).

After that, we stirred the mixture, then sprinkled 2 teaspoons of sodium hydrosulphite on the surface of the moving liquid to avoid lumps and to avoid oxygenating the bath.  We covered the vat and left it for a while.  Most of the vats were ready for use after this stage, as yellow showed around the edge of the liquid, and a piece of fabric dipped in showed that they were ready

but we had to stir, add more sodium hydrosulphite, cover, leave and wait with one of the vats.

Over the week, we had homework of shibori tying some fabric using techniques like awase-nui ( bamboo leaf), karamatsu ((Japanese larch), maki-nui (chevron stripes), yamamichi (mountain path) and Chinese button flower.  After refreshing the vats, we soaked our stitched and knotted fabrics in water.  We then learned how to do pole-wrapping

and clamping:

and soaked those fabrics too.  I found that the new wood I had used for clamping leached brown into my fabric, but I quite like the effect.

When the vats were ready, we used rubber gloves to squeeze out the excess water and immersed the yarns in the fabric under the dyenbath and "milked " it for a few minutes.  When it had absorbed enough of the dye, we squeezed the fabric under the surface and removed the fabric without dripping or splashing to avoid oxygenating the bath.  As before, the magical change of the fabric from yellowy green to blue is mesmerising.  We kept dipping until we got the colour we wanted.  I found that the date and the caustic soda mixes gave the darkest blues and the  pear mixture the lightest.

The hardest part of the process is taking your bundles and undoing/unpicking the threads without making a hole in the fabrics.  The sewing processes are the slowest to unpick.  However, the results make patience worthwhile.  Here are some of the tutors' examples that got us motivated:

I'll show my work in my next blog.

 

 I took my fabrics home to oxidize and then washed and rinsed them.  But before I went home, I took photos of more of the inspirational work by our tutors.  Here is a hand-knitted tea cosy:

 

 

 

 

and this is a nuno felted stole using natural dyes.

Cant wait for my next workshop - a dipping day.

Indigo dyeing at the Plant Craft Cottage, the Royal Botanic Gardens

 It really worth trawling through the internet.  By doing that, I have found one of Melbourne's hidden treasures, the Plant Craft Cottage at the Royal Botanic Gardens. 

 I speedily enrolled in their Traditional Shibori-Organic Indigo workshop once I found it, and last weekend spent a fabulous Saturday learning how much I don't know with the wonderful women there.  Many of the Natural Dye Group have the knowledge of thirty or more years and I really hung on to every word, trying to absorb some of their skills by osmosis.

We started with a brief outline of a description of, and the history of, indigo, then set off to make up a stock solution and chemical dye vat.  First, we put 100 ml of warmish water in a glass jar with some marbles.

To this, we added 6 teaspoons of indigo powder, and we stirred it to make a thin paste.  Next, 400 ml water was added and the mixture shaken ( with the lid on).

 

 After this, an alkali base, in this case, 3 tablespoons of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), was added to the liquid, one tablespoon at a time.  It is important to add strong substances to weak or caustic soda to fluid, because heat is produced.

After this, 6 teaspoons of stabilised sodium hydrosuphite (RIT) was sprinkled onto the surface  and stirred to ensure there were no lumps. 

The lid was then placed on the jar, which was shaken, then placed in warm (about 50 degrees C) water for 10 minutes to brew.  The solution took on a yellow brown hue.

  After this, we made up the indigo vats in plastic bins, by putting warm water in the bin.  The stock solution was gently added to give a good colour 

using a sieve to strain out the marbles.

 The vat was left to stew and was ready for use when a greenish yellowish colour appeared and it felt slimy.

As well as the chemical vats, we made up organic vats using Michel Garcia's methods. 

The fructose vat apparently yields a paleish dye and  is created using the above steps, but using 10 gm of powdered indigo, then a base of 20g hydrated lime (calcium carbonate)

and 30g of fructose.

The fruit vats were made by cooking 500 g of chopped well ripened pears

or pealed bananas (to extract the sugars) for a few minutes, then sieving the cooled mixture to extract the juice.  This juice was used to stir in  25g powdered indigo, and then 15g of hydrating lime.

 The darkest organic dye apparently comes from using 125g chopped dates, which are again cooked to extract the fruit sugar, cooled and sieved.  In this method, 125g indigo powder is added to the juice, then 45g sodium carbonate (which is washing soda) and 60g hydrated lime.

After we had made our stock solutions, we settled down to make some shibori samplers on pre-washed white cotton.  This one used a running stitch with diagonal lines to produce several different effects.

  

Once the stitching was done, the threads were pulled tight and knotted.

( I discovered later that my samplers were indistinct because I didn't pull tightly enough, so the indigo seeped into areas I wanted to remain white.)

Next, the  cotton bundles were soaked in water.

After that, each bundle was carefully squeezed, avoiding exposure to oxygen, and immersed in the dye vat where the bundle was squeezed and massaged under the surface for a few minutes, avoiding dripping or aerating the water.  We only had time for the one dip, but darker colours can be achieved.  When the bundle was removed and squeezed into a bowl, the colour of the fabric was green

but oxidisation quickly turned the fabrics blue.

After the fabrics dried, we undid the stitching and knots and, after washing, these are my results:

Tomorrow's class will develop my skills more, but I obviously need much more practice with knotting tightly.  Still, I learned a lot from my errors and had fun.  What more can you ask for?

The Museum of Ethnology, Vietnam - a great place to learn about the arts and crafts of the Vietnamese people

On our last full day in Hanoi, I took Bob to see the Museum of Ethnology, of which I have some very fond memories.  The Museum is a fair way from where we are staying so we had to catch a taxi which took us through suburbs showing strong signs of Vietnam's growing prosperity and the investment of  other countries, especially Japan.  The Museum was built in 1995 as a research centre and a public museum, partly with government money and partly through sponsors (often foreign embassies, like Finland). The museum is very informative, especially for those visitors who are interested in the 54 ethnic groups which make up the nation and in their cultures.  I found it especially interesting because it depicts, and often explains, the arts and crafts of each ethnic group.  For instance, it covers woodblock printing, lacquer work,engraving, bronze work, wood carving, weaving and ceramics, amongst other areas.  My only reservation about this museum is that the government seems to have lost interest in it and it is looking a bit tired.  Plus, the staff are not as enthusiastic or involved as they were on my last visit.  I think it maybe needs a change of management, or some new money injected into it, because it is fantastic, but in need of some rejuvenation.

My specific enthusiasms are the weaving and patchwork on display.  The colours, arrangements, combinations and the techniques are amazing.  The work of the Hmong is famous

but I also admired this patchwork is of the type sold in the Dong Van market in Ha Giang Province

.

And of course, I was also inspired by the installations.  This is a detail of a Thai ritual tree

and this is a detail of a ritual pole of about 13 metres high made by the Co people is used during the thanksgiving festival to connect the human to the spiritual world.

The basketware and use of natural plant fibres for weaving useful and decorative items was also impressive

The other interesting area was that of wood carving:

And I could take home some of the ceramics!

The museum also has special displays. 

The one this time was a collection of extraordinary photographs of life in the Central Highlands in the 1950s taken by Jean-Marie Duchange.  Another dispay of his photographs is in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. 

As well as the internal museum displays, there is a garden

which contains examples of boats, housing, communal halls, vegetable gardens, medicinal gardens,water puppet pavilions and other elements of  village life. This is an eye for scaring off evil spirits on the prow of a boat.

 Again, function and beauty merge in the buildings which have been built by these village people. 

This is a Bahnar communal house,

this is a Hani House

 and this is an Ede house.

This is a Cotu tomb

The insides of the buildings have great patterns

and so do these water irrigation systems:

 

And now, our wonderful trip to Vietnam is over.  We have survived the horrible trip back home, with all it involves: queues, airline "food", dessicated and de-oxygenated air, customs officials who treat you as if you are trying to blow up the world, reduced personal space, uncomfortable chairs, crying babies.  But, on the good side, now, I can also use all the worderful inspiration of my trip and start creating again.