| | Wednesday, December 21, 2005
My Sister's Shirt
Moving right along with the tie dye projects...I have 4 shirts left to do. My fingers ache!! My neck and upper back ache with strain of pulling twine and poor posture of hunching over my work while tying and untying. Poor, poor Me!  (I love it!)
Here is the shirt I did for my one and only sister. She is 4 years younger than I, and did well in the competition for making herself known as well as our brother and myself. (-:
She used to hate me pretty good at times....and here is my favortie hateful sibling story..I love to tell this story, and my sister just rolls her eyes, probably wishing I would quit telling it...
One time, when she was about 4, she sneaked up behind me (I was lounging on the sofa) and she cracked me over the head with an (empty) **glass** 32-oz coke bottle!! She told me years later that she expected me to jump up and kill her....but was surprised that all I did was lay there. Indeed, I have no recollection of what happened next, but do remember the pain.....
We are much better friends these days. Anyway, my sister is a powerhouse of ideas, words, and motivation about things that impassion her. So I decided to make the shirt vibrant with warm colors, and somewhat explosive.
The shirt has a central star pattern, and different colors at each sleeve and the bottom of the shirt. I basically soaked the shirt in different colors of dye from all three ends, and the dye crept towards the center of the shirt. I did a squirt bottle delivery of dye to the star in the center. Here we go!
First, I soaked the plain, white shirt in dye fixer (soda ash) and hung it up to drip dry. (after wringing it out first) I didn't want the beautiful colors to wash out by applying the liquid fixer later, so this is why I put the fixer on first. (as in the usual way of "direct application" dying)
To make the star, I eyeballed the center of the shirt, grasped it, and twisted the fabric. (imagining my sister's nose all the while...nah, not really..) And then bound it with twine at intervals..
Here's a closeup....
Then I divided the remainder of the shirt into thirds...the bottom half of the shirt, and each sleeve. I let the shirt sort of pleat it's way naturally as I gathered up each section, taking up the fabric from each side, till I reached the star in the center. Then I loosely spiral-bound the individual fabric sections to keep it together.
In order for each section to bend enough to soak in a little cup of dye, (and not tip over the dye) I elevated the center of the shirt, allowing the three "legs" to slope downwards into their drinking cups. To elevate the center, I put my ball of twine in a plastic grocery bag (to protect it from dye) and put the center of the shirt on top of the twine ball. I put each "leg" of fabric in a small plastic cup, and the whole shebang inside a cookie sheet lined with plastic bag.
Then I poured small amounts of Dharma"soft orange" dye into one sleeve's drinking cup, and Dharma's "golden yellow" into the cups for the other sleeve and bottom of the shirt. I used about 2 cups of each orange and yellow dye total. I just kept adding dye to the cups as Shirt Thing soaked it up. Yum, yum!
Here's a tip view of the operation in progress. This was so exciting and satisfying to watch! Shirt Thing looks like a 3-legged Spider, ay? It went fast at first, but slowed down after the first hour or so....
A few hours later, I added orange, and then red dye to the star portion with squirt bottles, being careful to try not to drip on the rest of the shirt.
Here's Shirt Thing 12 hours later. I let it drink up the dye all night long, covered by plastic bags to keep the fabric wet. (you want to keep the fabric wet the whole time you are curing it, and in in direct application of dye, you want it to sit wet anywhere from 2 hours-24)
The dye soaked right up to the base of the star in the center.
So in the morning, I removed Spider Shirt Thing, washed it, unbound it, and washed it some more, and this is how it turned out....
Radiant, energetic...just like my sister!
Coming next....a tale of two brother-in-laws.....and their shirts!
Thank you all for coming in here and checking back...your visits in here help me keep motivated to keep tie dying till my gift list is complete!!!!
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| | Posted 12/21/2005 2:43 AM - 2 views - 7 comments
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