Tien Chiu

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You are here: Home / All blog posts / Tie-dyed rebel
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April 21, 2017 by Tien Chiu

Tie-dyed rebel

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy but also depressingly lacking in any creative work. The executive director at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles decided to move on to other opportunities, so resigned her position early last week. Since I’m the President of the Board of Directors at the Museum, that means most of my time has been spent dealing with Museum logistics and preparing for the search for a new ED. So, lots of activity, but nothing interesting on the creative front.

Which is why I finally rebelled and decided to do a tie-dye marathon. I spent one entire day tying interesting patterns into twelve garments: eight shirts, two dresses, and two pairs of leggings. Then I soaked them in soda ash and let them sit until they were completely dry. Then I spent another half-day yesterday carefully applying dyes, and washed out the dye today. Here are the results, with commentary.

I’ll start with the attempts at an eight-pointed lotus design:

tie-dyed T-shirt with a fourfold symmetric design
This was an attempt to fold an eight-pointed “lotus flower” design. I was a bit surprised that it actually came out as a square! It’s lovely, though, so I’m not too sad that I failed at the lotus.
Another attempt at an eight-pointed lotus. This one came out as a diamond – go figure! I like it, though I think it’s a little too dark in the center. I wouldn’t normally put a dark design against a fiery background, but I was starting to run out of dye, and the only dyes I had enough of to form a background were yellow and orange. I like the color combination, though!
A third attempt at the lotus. I like the strong design but think the colors are a bit “too much”. This would have looked better in just two or three colors.

Here are two “lotus variants,” one in leggings and one in a dress.

tie-dyed summer dress
This dress features Yet Another Lotus Attempt (are you detecting a theme here?), this time as a very small fiery “star” against a black-and-purple “spider pattern”
Another (very small) lotus attempt on the thighs, plus a starburst further down. I like these – they’ll be very cheerful for doing yoga in the mornings.

I was a bit obsessed with doing lotus/mandala designs. I think I tied them correctly, but I may not have applied the dye in the right patterns to get an eight-pointed design. Next time I will try again! But they are not failures in any sense of the word – I love them!

You’ll be glad to know that I did eventually get bored of tying mandala patterns. Here’s a shirt that I call “Sunset in the Valley”:

tie-dye t-shirt with a sun and hills
Sunset in a valley, as interpreted in tie-dye. I like this one a lot.

And here is a shirt that was folded in half lengthwise, then folded in a spiral design, resulting in two symmetric half-spirals. There is too much black in this shirt for my taste, but I love orange and yellow, so will probably wear it anyway:

And – as a reward for reading all the way down – here are my two very favorite shirts. The first one I’m calling “Galaxy” – it’s a fairly common tie-dye pattern, but I threw in some additional stars and planets to make it more intriguing:

Tie-dyed “galaxy”. This one was time-consuming to fold and tie, mainly because of the many tiny little “stars”.

And here is my favorite of all: a rainbow “spider” pattern. This is created by folding a T-shirt in half lengthwise, then coiling it in a spiral to give a symmetric half-spiral pattern.

Rainbow "spider" tie-dyed T-shirt
Rainbow “spider” tie-dyed T-shirt

Tomorrow and Sunday I’m taking a much-needed rest break from Museum affairs, and going to an intriguing workshop instead. Chris Palmer, the author of the origami-in-cloth book Shadowfolds, is teaching how to combine the origami methods in Shadowfolds with arashi shibori to produce some very interesting and beautiful pieces. Pix when finished, of course!

Finally, because it has been far too long since the cats have graced this page, here are two pictures of the lords of the household:

Fritz eyeing a cat toy, dangled just out of reach....
Fritz eyeing a cat toy, dangled just out of reach….
OK, who let the cat into the bag?
OK, who let the cat into the bag?

And that’s it! More in a day or two, after the workshop is done.

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: tie-dye

Previous post: Problem-solving sure beats procrastinating!
Next post: Another dye cube, and some thoughts on color mixing

Comments

  1. Mary Coburn says

    April 21, 2017 at 11:59 pm

    Beautiful pieces, and the cats are amazing!!!!

  2. Cynthia Lazzaretti says

    April 22, 2017 at 9:49 am

    Love your adventures! The dress got my attention, with the burst of warmth right at the Chakra! Looking forward to all you share, warm regards.

  3. Lynne Mercer says

    April 22, 2017 at 11:10 am

    I was going to declare the leggings my favorite until I got down to the rainbow spider pattern. Now i am torn between the two. Takes me back to the 60’s!! A very exciting time. I am so happy I was fortunate enough to experience it first hand.

  4. phillippa lack says

    April 22, 2017 at 7:51 pm

    just as amazing as your weaving!

  5. ANNA SHELDON says

    April 22, 2017 at 9:32 pm

    these are awesome. I love the “galaxy”.

  6. Sharon says

    April 23, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    It looks like you folded the fabric for your lotus in eights. Looking online, it looks like for the lotus one must fold in sixteenths… one more fold.

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