#indigo dye

[miamaimania]

"how to return" (2017) by Diedrick Brackens ☀ A moment so private you can almost hear water droplets in the weave.

[bethwonkenobi]

My first quilt from an indigo dying and quilt making class I took back in March.

[foragersfleece]

Indigo is a slow kind of magic.

Fresh from the vat, the yarn isn’t blue yet — it comes out green. Then the air does its quiet work, and the color deepens while you wait.

This process is called oxidation. I call it beautiful.

“Washed Indigo” arrives in the shop Friday.

[seriously--fangirling]

WIP Indigo-Dyed Petrova Line Cotton Bandana

I plan on dyeing the line red and the circles to look like Tau Ceti and Adrian.

Dyed this at the city library.

Obviously, it needs ironing.

[rjonnn]

[a-potato-does-art]

Wow! dye processes on my art blog?

The red pieces are red linen over dyed with indigo

The central piece is white Kona cotton dyed using painted mordant with cochineal

I can’t wait to make things from these fabrics!

The center piece will just be made into a bandana and the others will probably be sewn together in some way

[rasam]

wool rug, indigo dyed (60x100cm) made in San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca, México, purchased from Zapotec weavers by @persimmonskins

[talesofedo]

A travel cape. (And my helpful cat.)

I recently added this to my collection (once UPS finally released it from the hell that is its Louisville world hub, where my package was marked for "disposal" twice before finally moving), fully expecting it to be a replica made for a movie or TV show.

I'm pleasantly surprised to find it's more likely to be original to the late Edo or the early Meiji period.

The cape is made up of 18 panels, an attached collar covering the back of the neck, and a band of blue trim hemming in all the edges. The entire thing is hand stitched with beautiful even stitches.

The material appears to be either cotton or ramie, with a third layer between the two, which should be washi paper. Unfortunately, the only way to determine the inner layer with certainty would be to take apart a seam, and I'm not about to do that.

Washi paper would make sense because it's light but also insulating and can be treated to be water resistant.

There's a neat exhibit at the Paper Museum on clothing using washi fabrics, here, which includes a lot of photos. And there's a similar cape that was sold by a Japanese antiques dealer, here, which also mentions the washi lining. The Smithsonian has one of these and gives the lining material as "oil paper".

One interesting detail are the toggles, which are made from bone. Specifically, they appear to have been made from repurposed pieces of a bone toothbrush. You can see small holes drilled for bristles on the top toggle in the photo on the right.

While this type of toothbrush was not common, bone toothbrushes did see some use in Japan and came there by way of trade with China. They were not domestically produced in Japan until the early Meiji period.

There's overall little wear and hardly any discoloration on the cloak. Interestingly, the one spot of wear along the rear hem would fall just about where a sword would be carried. (Photo on the right.) I can't say with any certainty that this is what caused the wear pattern, of course, but it's worth noting.

The photo on the left is just a detail shot of the binding. When I saw this item in pictures originally, I assumed the white stripe in the binding was a machine sewn seam, but it's actually a woven pattern. The stitching is done by hand.