I dyed one very long piece of fabric this Summer, 150 feet to be exact, one 50 yard bolt of silk habotai. My plan was to bring it to Burning Man where this year’s theme was Evolution. I wanted to create something that had a narrative, even if very abstract, but there were challenges in the process. One challenge was simply time, I had just a few days to fit in the project as I spent my Summer either out of town or working on my pieces for the MadArt exhibition. Although I would have like to use soy wax batik to add pictoral and linear elements, I just couldn’t figure out just how I was going to remove the wax out of that much fabric within my time frame. Our final solution was to use multiple shibori techniques and gradation of color over the length of the fabric. With my husband as an assistant, we bound and dyed the fabric one day, batched it overnight, and washed it out the next day.

painting dye on one section of the piece

I used a palette of colors intended to blend with the colors of the playa, the ancient dry lakebed that is called the Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man takes place. I predyed the fabric a warm neutral in the washer before applying any other color.

the fabric during dyeing

The shibori techniques we used included rubber bands for small and large circles, and low-water dyeing techniques where we pleated or scrunched the fabric. We also painted the dyes directly on the fabric. Because I working exclusively with silk, I used an acid fixative (citric acid crystals)  instead of an alkaline “fix mix” of soda ash and baking soda. This worked great with most of the dye fixing and hardly any wash out.

rubber bands still in the fabric

rinsing out one looong piece of fabric