I love how this project turned out! I made this while I was visiting my friend Renee the other night. She loves clothes and works at a clothing store so naturally she has an abundance of it. She is also dedicated to recycling and reusing things, so she had a little pile of clothes that were just waiting to be transformed. We decided to experiment with some fabric paints and tie-dye techniques. She washed luminous impressionist colours on some leggings. I have yet to see how they turned out, but I have visions of her wearing them on a misty grey Halifax day with her rain boots.
The technique I used for the shirt is called arashi shibori, it is a Japanese resist technique that involves tightly binding the cloth by wrapping with string. “Arashi” comes from the Japanese word for storm, “Shibori” refers to the technique of tied resist and dying. Traditionally you would use wrap the cloth around a pole, but in theory any cylinder could work. You will need an old tee shirt, a brush, some fabric paint or dye suitable for painting on cotton (I used a seta colour paint which Renee bought at Loomis for my t-shirt), some string or wool and an appropriate bucket (or tube). It is important that the t-shirt “fit” the bucket, it needs to fit over the bucket easily without too much bulk to get the desired effect. This works best with v-necks or open neck shirts because is easier to stretch the whole shirt over the bucket. A tube dress or stretchy skirt would also work great.
Step 1. Pull the shirt over the bucket and tie a loop around the bottom hem to secure it. Keep wrapping the string tightly around and around the bucket and the t-shirt, stop every few loops to push the fabric and string tightly towards the hem where you began wrapping. Don’t be too precious about the wrapping process, wrinkles will give you neat irregularities in the pattern. Keep wrapping it all the way up to the top.
Step 2. At this point the shirt should be wrapped and bunched tightly around the bucket. You should take this to the tub with a towel, dampen the shirt and use the towel to soak up any excess water.
Step 3: Put some newspaper down and you’re ready to apply your colour. Go wild! The more contrast the bolder the pattern, natural colours and monotones are also lovely. (I mixed setacolour soleil transparent fabric paint in “fawn” with a little of a few other setacolour fabric paints. In the end the colours all mixed together into a complex brown. I think it would be necessary to use more of the thicker fabric paint to see more colour differenciation.)
Step 4: Wait until the shirt is completely dry and unwrap. This is the fun part since the results are always a surprise. Before you rinse anything iron your garment to fix the paint, there should be full instructions on the paint package.
If you aren’t the crafty type check back because I’ll have some fresh ones up in the store for the spring season soon enough!
