By Daniel G. Van Olst
Materials Needed:
- A long thin waterproof form, maybe 4 or 5 inches wide and about as long as the diagonal on your flags. I use one side of a Dharma fabric box covered in Saran Wrap, so it’s about 5″ by 45″.
- About a dozen rubber bands, big newspaper ones, not the wimpy little ones.
- An old beach towel you can get dye on.
Step One:
Double your silk and drape over one end of the form where you want your center point to and secure with a rubber band.
Step Two:
Pleat fabric from left to right.
Be sure to tug down a bit as you add each pleat, so that all of the pleats are the same length in the long direction as well as the short direction.
Step Three:
Place all pleats on the right side of form and secure with rubber band.
Step Four:
Spread pleats evenly to left side of form.
Step Five:
Even out pleats and tug so that fabric is even.
Step six:
Repeat every 8 inches or so, working down the form until done.
It helps if you preload an extra rubber band every time you complete a row of pleats, so that you have it handy for the next row.
Completed tie job, both front and back.
Step seven:
Put assembly on old towel and apply dye.
You need to completely finish applying dye to the front side before going on.
You can’t go back.
Step eight:
Flip assembly onto towel.
Step nine:
Cut rubber bands and remove form.
Step ten:
Apply dye to back side, attempting to remember in the process what you did to the front side.
Step eleven:
Make a rolled log of fabric and baggies.
Stick the entire thing in another baggie and secure with rubber bands.
Step twelve:
Nuke it!
the complpleted dye job
I’ve learned with the dye application that you don’t want anything too complicated, otherwise you end up with a “frog-in-a-blender” effect; and you don’t want to apply horizontal bands, since you end up with concentric rings that might be better achieved with a radial fold.
Simple diagonal striped patterns seem to work well.
~ Dan
