Diving into the indigo vat

Because when its a dull, grey Saturday in February what better way is there to drive away the winter blues! (which is a bit of an ironic statement I suppose, but you get the drift).

So Mix3d Stitch got their act together and set a date for a bit of indigo dyeing.

Now I am no expert with the indigo vat, but Jane Charles is.

So with Yvonne, the third member of Mix3d Stitch, we met for a session.

She mixed it all up so please don't be asking me for the recipe!

But we used the bucket with the lid, for one thing I do know about Indigo is that it doesn't like oxygen.

We presoaked fabric in a bucket of water - we had a right old mix; some old linen napkins, some odds and sods of furnishing fabric, even some crocheted doilies that Yvonne had found on Ebay.

I love the alchemy - the fabrics come out of the vat yellow and then the air gradually turns them blue. This was one of the napkins in transition.

But silk works wonderfully well in the indigo and Yvonne has some silk scarves from Rainbow Silks that she had 'bound' to make the pattern.

More alchemy in action on the draining board.

And on an old clothes drier.

We had a bit of a production line going.

We also had gloves on - that said my hands are still a delicate shade of blue.

A bundle of Yvonne's scarves - dyed and rinsed and going home to be dried and ironed.

And here is the pattern all that stitching created, but the colour is not quite right. The blue of the bundle in the picture above is the true colour. Silk really does take indigo well.