Stripes Tie-Dyed Wrap

I bought a length of Osnaburg a little bit back mostly because I wanted to see if it was all it was hyped up to be as a wrap.  It was a little darker in its natural color than I had imagined, so the ideas I had rattling around in my head were laid aside for now.  I wanted to use the natural color as almost part of the design, or at least to shift the colors into a range that was not so glaringly bright.  So I decided on stripes.  Originally I thought about green, blue and orange, but on doing some test stripes, I actually wanted more warm colors than cool ones.

I folded the fabric accordion-style across the length of the wrap so that when I applied color it would create stripes that ran along the rails of the wrap.  Once I had gotten some more or less regular folds, I started tying.  I was intending to use twine, but when it came right down to it, rubberbands seemed easier, especially since I had done a soda ash presoak and was folding wet, so I had gloves on anyway.

folded

rubberbanded

Then I mixed up the dyes: burgundy, deep orange, chinese red, and a purple and a blue of my own composition.  The next step was incredibly time-consuming.  I applied the dye to the stripes between the rubberbands using a syringe.   I stuck the syringe into the folds to inject the dye into the tight spaces.   Once the dyes were applied to the top half of the folded wrap, I massaged in the dyes. Then turned it over and did that whole process again on the other side.  With a now screaming toddler.  Fun.  I turned on the hose for him, even though it's a little "chilly" today.  It took about an hour and a half to do all the folding and dyeing.  After covering in plastic and setting in the sun there's a bit of a break.

dye added

About 3 hours after I left it, I came back to add more dye into folds and do more massaging.   Things were looking pretty good and I had high hopes.

I ended up taking it all inside after the sun went behind the mountains, and I'm glad I did because we got the first rain in months overnight.   I put it in the garage since it's warm and babyproof.  Then in the morning, I moved on top of the dryer while I did laundry for some more warmth.  If I'd done this last week the temps would have been vastly different!  At 24 hours along, I decided it was as thoroughly done as it was gonna be, and it's not getting any warmer.  I also was starting to worry about the dyes creeping into each others' territory and turning too muddy.  So into the washer to rinse it went!  I considered setting it out in the rain, but decided that without constant checking it might bleed all over itself.  A few hot washes later and it looked like this:

warm stripes