Tie dye kimono skirt
Ugh, ok.. Better late than never right? I finished this skirt at the start of the year but I also started school and moved house and all my plans kinda blew up leaving my blog just sitting there in the dirt waiting to be picked up again.
So here we are- imagine it's the start of 2020 and you're thinking "this will be a great year"! The Australian bushfires seem just like any other year and you haven't even heard of the Corona Virus....
It has been such a long time of planning, researching, toiling (aka making a muslin) and practicing the dying techniques for the tie dye kimono dress that it felt so good to finally work on something relatively quick and easy. I didn't make a toile for the skirt because I had already made one for the dress and felt fairly confident about the fit so long as I got the waistband right.
Step 1- Was buying the fabric, which seems easy but it was actually kinda difficult because of the limiting factors. It needed to be white and a natural fabric so I could dye it, plus it had to be 150cm wide. The fabric was slightly thicker and stiffer than I was planning on but it ended up being literally the only fabric I found at Spotlight that was suitable. FYI the suggested fabrics for the pattern were silk and satin, but I didn't want to use silk because it isn't vegan and I didn't want to use synthetic satin because microplastics. I didn't use the same fabric as I had for the dress (bamboo sateen) because it was kinda expensive and the skirt needed a lot of fabric.
Step two- Pre washing, drying and ironing the fabric. Boring but necessary and strangely satisfying.
Step three- Trace and cut fabric. Oh my God this was so easy compared to how I have been doing it in the past! I was given an A0 size (90cm x 120cm) cutting mat for Christmas which made using the rotary cutter so much easier. Before that I was using an A3 size mat and having to cut in sections, moving the mat around underneath and shifting the different layers of fabric so it wasn't very accurate. I also thought I needed a new blade but it turns out it just wasn't cutting properly because my old cutting mat was damaged and had some gouges in it.
Step four- Sew skirt. Because I wanted the whole skirt to be ombre dyed I decided to sew it together first and then dye the entire thing. For the dress I dyed each piece of fabric separately before sewing, so you can check out my previous post to see that. The most important thing I did (very pleased with myself for remembering) was using thread which would match the final colours as I was using polyester thread and it wouldn't dye. I used a pink thread for the hem and yellow for the waistband.
Step five- Mark out the pattern of the spiderweb design. You could either do this totally randomly or measured out precisely but I decided to split the difference. I wanted the spiderwebs to flow along the hem organically as if they were flowers growing or blown along on the wind. Firstly I straightened out the hem as much as possible then I folded the skirt in half over and over until it was a small triangle-ish shape. I didn't bother with folding the top half of the skirt and just let it bunch up as I only wanted flowers on the hem. I then spaced where i wanted the spiderwebs and used pins to transfer the location through the multiple layers, so it was consistent but by no means precise. In addition to the hem I also wanted some spiderwebs creeping up along one side and for that I marked the skirt while it was on the mannequin.
Step six- THE LONGEST STEP! Due to a neck injury I spent a couple of days at home sick, watching movies and tying off all the little cones. Taking the centre mark I lifted it up into a cone shape and then wrapped it tightly with sewing thread. It took about 10 hours over 2 days to do and was very hard on my fingers. To protect my fingers I used electrical tape wound a couple of times around my thumb and pointer finger.
Step seven- To dye the skirt I used 2 buckets, one filled with yellow dye and one filled with red dye. I placed the buckets side by side and then put the skirt in between, with the top part in the yellow and the bottom in the red. The dye started to wick up the fabric, but after an hour it had not travelled very far so I dunked the skirt in the buckets further. After another half hour or so the two colours had mostly blended and I dunked them another couple of times to ensure they were well blended. Once I removed the skirt from the buckets I squeezed out most of the excess dye so it was no longer dripping and put each half in a separate plastic bag to prevent any further transfer of colours. I put a giant rubber band around the plastic bag to keep the yellow half of the skirt in its bag but pulled out a little of the hem of the skirt at a time. The final step of the dying process was manually colouring the lower hem with hot pink, using a sauce bottle to apply the dye. I did this because I wasn't 100% happy with how the red had turned out (I think there wasn't enough dye in the bucket so it was diluted too much). Originally I wanted the skirt to be yellow and pink but my friend had suggested those colours may make a shade of brown where they bled together. Once that was done I put a rubber band around the second bag and then put both bags into another bag so nothing leaked.
Step eight- The next day I had to rinse out the dye. This step can get a bit messy so I always do it in the laundry sink and clean up straight away afterwards to prevent stains. It's also a good idea to use an apron and gloves to protect your clothes and hands from dye. I took the lower half of the skirt out of the bags, leaving the yellow section in the bag to protect it while I work. Using a quick unpick, I undid all the tied up sections around the hem, being careful not to damage the fabric. It isn't necessary to cut through all the layers of thread- sometimes if you cut off some and then pull the fabric apart it will flatten out and the thread will roll off.
Step nine- Once all the tied sections were undone I put the skirt in the washing machine with laundry powder. I set the washing machine to a cool wash, including prewash and extra rinse cycles. This extra long wash ensures that all the excess dye is rinsed out.Ta dahhh! Super pretty ombre skirt is now ready to go on the line and then be worn!
Overall I was really pleased with how it turned out but I wish the red had been more vibrant. I'm glad I added the pink dye to the hem otherwise I think it would have been too pale. Next time I try to do an ombre dye I will be more precise with the amounts of dye I use so the intensity of the colours is consistent. I would probably also dunk the garment into the buckets more as it was really slow for the dye to wick up on its own.
OK, that's all folks!
