Indigo Fun

I’ve not had any luck growing indigo … yet. The indigo I used for this linen and yarn is a prereduced indigo powder from Jacquard. It was very easy to use following their simple instructions so I won’t bother sharing them here. No tips to add, other than to have a lot of material ready to dye! I had a project in mind, the Coral dress by Fibre Mood that I’d just sewn in bleached linen. I sketched my goal, gathered lots of rubber bands and durable plastic sheeting, and set up the indigo vat.

Patterns from Fibre Mood can be ordered in print form or downloaded to print at home. I chose the latter.

Using rubber bands, I gathered varying amounts of fabric, some with thick plastic to resist the dye and some open to the dye. It was a tight fit to get all those circles wrapped and my fingers were quite sore by the end of it.

I dipped the dress carefully and slowly a few times to saturate the colour and hung it off the porch to oxidize fully before washing. There was a lot of dye left in the vat so I prepped some yarn and more linen, including the leftovers from making this dress. Some pieces were gathered and clamped, some folded and sandwiched, some twisted and wrapped tightly with string, some with no processing other than a good soak.

The dress is beautiful! The back is a little more open than I would like, okay a lot more open than I would like, so I’ve sewn two ties in a deep blue linen to close it up. Still, I feel a little exposed. Consider that if you decide to make this pattern and maybe add a zipper if you choose a non-stretch fabric like this 100% linen. With some of the yarn, I knit up the Instant Gratification sweater to match and added adorable buttons with blue bird-themed illustrations. And with the rest of the linen, I pieced together this Noa shirt, which at the time was a free pattern. I love how it turned out. It, too, has adorable buttons that look like blue and white porcelain ware.