indigo – jodi's weblog

indigo diamonds

After two sessions of my weekly sewing circle spent untying and removing the tamarind seeds from this cloth, it looked like this:

indigo dyed fabric covered in tiny yellow puckers, hanging against a seafoam green garden shed

I half wished I could keep the bobbly texture forever, but it wasn’t going to be all that practical for the flowy summer throw I want to make (pattern link: Cris Wood Sews throw jacket). So here it is all pressed flat, blowing in the breeze in the cherry tree:

indigo dyed cloth with an allover pattern of tiny yellow diamonds, hanging from a cherry tree in an overgrown garden

Time spent on this project:

– measuring and marking the grid: 2.5 hours
– tying in tamarind seeds: 10.5 hours
– dyeing, washing out, neutralising: 2 hours
– untying and removing seeds: 4 hours

total time: 19 hours, not as bad as I’d feared because limiting the tying to just during sewing circle made it feel like WEEKS

a little blue update

indigo cotton with seeds tied into it, laid on a hardwood floor

Here’s that cotton shawl from the other day, after three dips in a strong indigo bath. As I’d hoped, the myrobalan tannin that was already in the fabric shifted the indigo in a teal direction.

Here it is hanging in the cherry tree:

an indigo dyed cotton shawl with seeds tied into it, hanging in a cherry tree

Since I did all the seed-tying at my Tuesday night sewing circle, I’m saving the unwrapping until I’m back at sewing circle. The suspense is killing me but I haven’t even taken out one single seed to have a peek.