Transcripts
1. introduction: Hi, I am Christine,
artist and nature lover from Switzerland. Welcome to my class! I will show you how to make beautiful hand-dyed bags and pouches, that you can use as gifts for family or friends
or just keep for yourself. I'll show you how to create one-color patterns, like this one and also patterns with several colors, like this one.
2. materials: The materials you need for this class are a spoon, a whisk. Rubber bands, string, some smaller buckets, hot water, dye. And with this dye, I need salt as well. If you use a different dye, you might need other supplements. Rubber gloves and the textiles, I want to dye. These are the textiles I use for this class: some little pouches which can
serve as key holders or purses, gift bags, pencil cases and small tote bags. It's important that you use textiles made of cotton. The dye, which I use for this class, is Decca, a German brand. I don't use it for T-shirts so much any more
because some colors can fade quite easily. But for bags and pouches, it's perfect because it's very easy to use, and it's great if you want to play with different colors.
3. tote bags: in this first lesson, I'm going to show you how you can dye the little tote bags. For the first pattern, you just scrunch
up the bag and fix it with rubber bands or you can also use strings as you like. Now I'm going to do some kind of stripes. I fold it vertically and bind it with string. If you want to learn more in depth about these patterns, Please check out my class called: "Create your own Hand-dyed Tote Bag 4 Easy Shibori Patterns" There you can learn how I do it. Time to mix the dye. This process is quite easy with the dye I use in this class. I pour a little bit of salt and then a little bit off the dye powder. Here I choose a turquoise blue. Gloves are important too. Now the hot water. And then I stir it very well until the powder and salt are dissolved. That's very important. Now the second color. It's a bright yellow. Again the salt and the hot water. It's too concentrated, so I add some more water to get a lighter tone. And now I dip the bag into the dye bath. The other tote goes into the blue dye, Also leaving part of it outside the bath. After a while off soaking, I took the yellow bag, pressed out the dye a little bit and
put the other half into the turquoise dye. The turquoise bag ended up in a darker blue. Here's the yellow and turquoise bag again. The colors look good to me. I need to rinse and then I want to open it up. And that's the result. Here's a picture of the two finished bags. The colors are always less saturated, when the fabric is dry. You cannot really see the stripes on the yellow tote, but the string helped separate the colors. That was the main purpose. I'm OK with the lightness of the colors, and the blue one seems okay to me, too.
4. giftbags : That's it. Now let's move on to the gift bags. I have small cotton gift bags here. I start by folding the first one
accordion-like to create a stripe in the middle. It's important to bind it tightly. Otherwise you won't see a good result. With the next one, I want to
create two stripes next to each other. Now some bags that are just scrunched up. This time I take a rubber band to fix it, but strings work equally well. Let's move on to the dying process. Again I take some off the dye powder, a burgundy color this time. I add some salt and hot water, Now stirring to dissolve everything. Let's make a test with a piece of fabric. Yes, it looks good. Dipping one off my gift bags. I don't want to have
the color all over the bag, so I lean it on the side Of the plastic cup. The bag with a single stripe
goes into the turquoise color. It's important to have just a small amount
of dye and water to create these designs. So now I have several bags
in three different dye bathes. Turquoise, burgundy and pink. And I let them soak for a while until
I'm happy with the intensity of the color. Okay, let's see how the
burgundy one looks like. I rinse it a bit in clear water. Now I can take off the rubber band. Oh, it's not very much off a contrast to see, So I decide to fold it again and
continue with the next color. It goes into the turquoise bath. In the background you can see one
that has been in two colors already. Now the pink one. Let's see what it looks like. Yes, that's more what I wanted. I love this one. Now, time to open the burgundy
one with turquoise blue on top. Yes, that looks nice. Let's open the one with a single stripe. Rinsing a bit. Okay, not much of a stripe to see, but I love the gradient. I will dip it in yellow color, as you'll see later. Now, one that was in yellow before.
It goes into a burgundy bath. But I have to make it a little bit more intense. Here are two bags sitting in dark blue. Let's see the results! You can see the finished
bags - dried and ironed. The torquoise one combined with yellow, the one with two stripes and
then two scrunched ones. As every color reacts differently, you never know how the
pattern will turn out exactly. For example, the blue and the
pink one look very different, although the pattern is more or less the same. And here are the next three finished bags: a turquoise one with a little bit off burgundy, the burgundy one with additional turquoise, which turned more into a blue purple, and the yellow one with additional burgundy.
5. pencilcases: Next we have the pencil cases. The ones that I have are very nice. Made of sturdy cotton. Let's make our first pattern. I fold it accordion-like and
bind it through the middle. The fabric is sturdy. It's a bit more difficult to create patterns, but I also like the different way
the patterns look when using this fabric. The possibilities are also a bit limited due
to the thickness and the shape of the pouch. Now, another pattern that looks nice on this pouch. I choose the center of the pouch on the bottom, and I bind the strings around this center to create a circle. You have to open the pouch to be able to do this. The first line is done. Now I bind it a second time, and that's it. The pouch is soaking in pink dye. Now I take it out and put it in a different color for the upper part. I choose the burgundy bath. You see, I'm not wearing both gloves because off the filming, but you should definitely wear gloves. With this pencil case, it's a little bit harder to bring the fabric
under the dye so that it can soak it up. It looks quite decent now. The color has penetrated the thick fabric. The second pouch is sitting in the turquoise bath. Now it goes in a dark blue. Here you can see the finished pencil cases. The circles on the red one are not very much
defined because off the thickness of the fabric. But I still love this pattern. And the blue one is a
pattern I really love for pencil cases.
6. pouches: The last items I'm going to dye for
this class are these little pouches which are keychain holders and
can be used for many different purposes. Again, I'm creating one with a stripe in the middle. You know by now how this works. The second one is again a random pattern, just the tissues scrunched up
and fixed with a rubber band. In the dye bath, you can now
see two with a single stripe. And here I've dyed a scrunched
one with turquoise and yellow. But I'm not happy with the result. So I'm going to put it in a third color. I scrunch it up again and fix it with rubber bands. This time it goes in a dark blue. This will create a nice contrast. The turquoise one goes in dark blue as well, and the red one sits in the yellow dye. And here are the results. The two with one stripe look very different. The stripe didn't really show on the blue one, but on the red/yellow one. And I like how the two scrunched ones turned out.
7. project: So, now to the project. As you can guess, Your project for this class is to
dye something with one or two colors. You can dye a little bag or pouch
like I did or use the technique for larger textiles. Just try to create a pattern
and play with different colors. Please take pictures of the process and the
finished pieces and upload them in the project section. Thank you so much for
watching my class and have fun, creating your own colorful bags and poaches.
Christine Aseka, textile dyeing and watercolor artist
