I couldn’t resist, sorry. I’m having so much fun thinking about and trying out different methods for my contribution to Bethany’s fabric swap. I’ve been intrigued by shibori (aka the ancient art of japanese tie dye or bound-resist dye) for awhile now, so I thought this would be a good time to try a super-simple, modified, and unofficial version of shibori. I hadn’t seen pictures of the technique before I did it (though now I have, on the wonderful All Things Shibori group on Flickr), so I kind of made it up as I went along. I started out by arbitrarily deciding on a grid pattern for my yard of fabric. I used a 4-inch square card to make little dots to indicate where I would pull up, twist and bind the fabric (with rubber bands, though the real technique calls for using linen or cotton thread).

Looks like pretty smocking, doesn’t it? Here it is up close:

Then I prepared a messy dye bath with midnight blue Rit dye (indigo is a more traditional dye for this, I believe, but I’m lazy and they have Rit at Target). I left the fabric in the dye for an hour, stirring gently every so often (didn’t want to accidentally pull out the rubber bands). I rinsed it out with cool water and then took out the rubber bands and hung it to dry:

Pretty nifty! Here is an up close look at one of the little circles:

They remind me of little starbursts. I still have to wash and dry the fabric again to get it to the color it will actually be, which I imagine, sadly, will be quite a bit lighter. But I am amazed at how well it turned out for a very first try! Today I tea-dyed a length of muslin to a pretty peachy color, and plan to work some Gocco stamp kit for fabric magic on it soon. Wish me luck!