Shibori and endless ways of tie and dye

Last few days has been very exciting for me and I feel happy to end this year this way.  I have learnt two new arts on clothes
Batik art
Tie and dye, Shibori

Tie and dye is what is locally known as the Bandani. I think every lady once in her life time would have bandani sari or dress in her wardrobe. What I learnt was various forms of tying a fabric and later dyeing it in dye solution. While learning to do this our instructor also taught us the art of Shibori.

Shibori is a Japanese dyeing technique where we fold,twist the cloth using a binding material such as thread, wood, rubber bands etc., and then dyeing it in indigo. Whatever is used to bind the fabric will resist the dye, resulting in patterns in the original color and areas of cloth where there was no binding would turn to indigo(dye color). Shibori is a very vast technique and there are tons of ways to do it and hence  you can create infinite number of patterns. While Shibori technique is mostly limited to indigo solution our own tie and dye techniques involves various varieties of Shibori but with different colored dye solution.

For the dye preparation, we used the direct colors available in the market. These are good for beginners but slight disadvantage colors might leak in the first few washes. Also the final color is slightly dull than what is expected.
To prepare the dye solution, weigh your cloth first(Say X grams).  Add
4% of X dye color,
4% of X Sodium Bicarbonate/Carbonate
4% of X soft soap like lifebuoy, grated
4% of X crystal salt.
All of these boiled together and you dip your cloth in it and let it stay for 20 to 25 minutes. Keep rotating the cloth frequently for uniform dyeing. Dry it in sun without untying. Once it has dried untie, wash it to remove the remains of soap.

And I will tell you it's really a magic created on clothes

Here is some sample which I did myself..

This I did drawing equidistant circles on a white cloth and later pinching these circles and tying it with thread.

After dyeing in Royal Blue dye solution I got this :

Second one was folding the cloth in a triangular shape and tying the ends with a thick thread and after dyeing it, and untying I got this. 

The third one was again folding the cloth in the triangular shape and tying the whole thing like a banana tightly with the thread.

And I got this!!

All of the above were white cloth of size 17 by 17 inch square with an intention of doing cushion covers. But unfortunately the color after drying turned out to be dull lavender so I am shelving the idea of cushion covers. Apart from this we also tried our hands on creating a dress material using Shibori. I am yet to finish it, and let you know the results soon. 

Till then, enjoy your last days of the year..