labricoleuse | Shibori experiments: folded pattern

I have to admit, i got a bit jealous with all the great results my students got out of their shibori project and it made me itchy to do some of my own experiments. Spring Break provided a great opportunity to step into the dyeshop while everyone was gone and explore.

Folded and clamped processes are perhaps my favorite to experiment with--i enjoy the mental origami of pattern-dyeing in this way. And, we had a HUGE donation of rayon slubbed-back satin donated, bolts of vintage fabric with a lovely weight and drape to it. My students had also saved leftover dye concentrate that they'd mixed up from an earlier fiber-reactive dye projects, so i decided to use up some of that before its shelf life expired, and test out how the vintage rayon would take to the shibori process.

At left, a "cube" of fabric which has been fan-folded first across the width and then down its length.
Each fold was pressed/steamed using the industrial iron at right.
One of the clamps is in the foreground, which i kept handy for size reference during the folding process.

Here's that block of fabric secured between the clamps with dye applied.
I used a yellow dye on the top half and a bronze dye on the bottom half.
These are fiber-reactive Pro MX dyes which process at room temperature.

Here's a couple more configurations with rectangular and triangular folding/clamping shapes.

And here's the results of that first trio: the first yellow/bronze piece is at left, the triangular one at center, and the rectangle at right. There's a 60" ruler at the top for size reference, and i've folded over the yardage so you can see how the dye took differently on the satin (lower) and the matte/slubbed (upper) sides of the fabric! These pieces are about 3 yards in length each.

I liked the results so much, i did two more, this time dyeing the base fabrics pink and blue before beginning the folding/clamping/overdyeing. This image also shows a dye migration that happened: the medallion shapes on the left were dyed using a green dye, and the yellow/blue components separated and migrated at different rates during the dye process, giving me these green-ringed gold shapes. Cool!