Seahawks Dyeworks

When I bought lime dye, I wasn't thinking about the Seahawks, honest. But seeing the color next to some blues and turquoises made the wheels start to spin. I did a couple fabric pieces using different tie-dye techniques, a couple of t-shirts with simple spirals (which didn't turn out all that well), and then because I had mixed too much dye, some more shirts with less obvious colorations.

On the right (and below), a folded and wrapped piece. I had seen this technique in a book on shibori, but it was done with a thin silk that allowed the dye to penetrate all the layers. I wasn't sure how well it would work on cotton, but I like the results. An approximately 9 inch wide strip was folded and pressed lengthwise until about 1 1/2 inches wide. Then it was wrapped spiraling around a narrow diameter PVC pipe, soaked in soda ash solution, and dye applied in stripes. The bullseye is a classic tie-dye pattern. It's about 40 inches square, gathered from a point in the middle, bound with rubber bands at intervals, and dyed in alternating colors.

These shirts were both spiraled and dyed to make a spider design. It worked better on the green one, but both of them had way too much white showing. So I overdyed them with the predominant color. The blue one doesn't have any discernible pattern left, but I think I like it that way.

These were done when I realized I had mixed up too much dye. The blue spots on white is kind of fun. The green one started with diluted leftovers, but was pretty drab so I touched it up with more dyes in the full strength. It has a sort of Monet, watercolor look to it.