My Final Piece Design Idea Drawings

For my final design I have chosen to do, I have done drawings in various different styles inspired by the techniques and methods I have learnt in my previous project which I wanted to explore further.

The first drawings of my final design idea I decided to do are inspired by the drawings in my blog called Fashion Illustrations – Method 3, Series 3.

For the workshop I previously watched a YouTube video called ‘Method 3: Drawing Exercises for Loosening Up’ by the London College of Fashion. This video showed you how to create drawings with a continuous line, tone, negative space and drawing with two hands at the same time.

I thought it would be really interesting to use these 4 methods for my own design to create some final design drawings that are quick to do and also effective.

This is my negative space final design illustration.

This is my continuous line final design illustration.

This fashion design illustration I created using tone.

This final design illustration I created by drawing with two hands at the same time.

I then decided to move onto creating a total different style of final design drawing inspired by the work of Edgar Artis, I have previously created my own layered fashion illustration inspired by his work in a blog called My layered fashion illustrations inspired by the work of Edgar Artis.

Edgar uses a range of different foods and objects to create incredible illustrations.

To create my own layered final design illustration, I started by drawing an outline of my design in a HB pencil on a plain piece of paper, I used this to layer the food and objects on top off.

I then gathered my objects to layer on top, black turtle beans, orange peel and tin foil.

The black turtle beans and tin foil are for the bodice and the orange peel for the skirt.

I folded the tin foil to create a cube shape to represent the pattern magic cube, I then used the turtle beans to create the rest of the bodice by standing them up on their side with the white dot at the top representing the stars which will be made from french knots in my final piece.

I then got a bit of orange peel and cut it into a rectangle to create my waistband. Next I overlapped the large pieces of textured orange peel, that represents my orange bubble skirt. Then my finished 3-D layered illustration was complete. I couldn’t find any objects or food that would look effective for the Suffolk Puffs so I left them out of the illustration. Unfortunately because I made my illustration out of perishable food I had to put it in the bin after I had taken the photos below.

For my final main design illustration I used watercolour pencils to create a colourful bodice and skirt. Once it was dry I added the french knots using a white pen.

The bodice is a black pattern magic bodice with a silver section of fabric for the cube and white french knots covering all the black bodice pannels.

The skirt has a variety of red and orange tones to represent the ice dyed fabric that I am going to create my bubble/balloon skirt from.

I then created a callout from the skirt to draw the suffolk puffs in. The Suffolk puffs will be varied sized and covering the front and back of the skirt. I drew them in a call out instead of on the watercolour skirt as they are such an odd thing to draw and they don’t look very good drawn.

The inspiration for my bodice design has come from the NASA Perseverance Rover which is represented by the silver pattern magic cube. I created pattern magic samples in a previous project and was inspired to incorporate it within a garment.

The black fabric of my bodice will represent outer space and the french knots will represent distant stars, the inspiration for the french knots came from Chesley Bonestell’s Mars paintings, he added white dots to his pantings to represent the stars you can see from that planet and I then took my own photos of the stars at night that you can see from earth.

The ice dyed bubble/balloon skirt with suffolk puffs was inspired by the planet Mars, with its colour shape, texture and craters. I researched into styles of skirt and I liked the style and volume of the bubble/balloon skirt. The inspiration for the colour came from my initial moodboards as well as the Mars survey I made asking ‘What colour do you associate with Mars’ all the votes were in the colours red and orange. Finally the inspiration for the suffolk puffs came from the fact that Mars is covered in at least 635,000 impact craters and I had used the textiles techniques that I had previously used at GCSE and I thought that they look very similar and it would be a good representation of the craters on Mars.

Together I hope that it will be effective and look like the Rover is heading towards the planet Mars to start its exploration to collect data.

I am happy with how all the final design drawings turned out using different styles for the exact same design, my favourite illustration is the main watercolour one as it its very colourful and the closest representation of how my final piece will hopefully look and my least favourite drawing was with tone as it is a bit messy and I just don’t like it as much as the rest.

Below is a digital colour palette which I have made based on the colours, I have used in my designs and plan to use in my final piece.

Bibliography

M.youtube.com. 2021. Method 3: Drawing Exercises for Loosening Up. [online] Available at: <https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=PzlCBVUJsLA&feature=emb_logo > [Accessed 21 May 2021].

Suffolk Puffs with Bondaweb

I have previously made Suffolk Puffs in this project in Sewing Suffolk Puffs, in this blog I am experimenting to find the perfect sized Suffolk Puffs and colour for the centre piece and practising with the use of bondaweb.

In my Constructing my Bubble/Balloon Skirt – Toile post I pinned my three largest Suffolk Puffs I made out of calico onto my practice skirt and I really like the size of the Suffolk Puffs on the skirt. 

For my final piece, I would like to add a second colour of fabric inside using bondaweb. I haven’t trialed it in this project, although I have used this technique and used bondaweb before.

I started by looking for larger sized circular objects, similar to what I used to create my three largest Suffolk Puffs in Sewing Suffolk Puffs. I found 5 different large circular objects to draw around which I thought would create the ideal sized Suffolk Puffs.

I used an old pillow case to create these practice Suffolk Puffs, this is a similar colour to the fabric I intend to use for my final piece.

I then fully unpicked the pillow case so it was just one large piece of fabric.

I started by drawing around each object using a biro before cutting all 5 circles out, the process is shown below in the photographs.

Below is a photograph of all 5 objects with all 5 fabric circles below.

I then ironed all 5 circles to remove the creases in the fabric.

I then found a dark grey jersey fabric and drew around a sellotape roll to create my 5 inner circles. After this I also cut 5 circles the exact same size out of bondaweb.

For each Suffolk Puff I needed a an outer circle of fabric, an smaller inner circle of fabric and another circle the same size out of bondaweb.

I started the bondaweb process by getting a damp cloth, this helps the bondaweb to fuse with the fabric. I started by laying the inside of the inner circle of fabric facing up with the bondaweb circle. With the rough webbed side on top, I then placed my damp cloth on top of the circles and then placed the iron on top of the circle for 10-15 seconds. The instructions for the bondaweb says that you don’t need a damp cloth for this particular part of the process but I personally found that the bondaweb fused better with the fabric using it.

Once I had ironed it for 10-15 seconds, I removed the damp cloth from the circles and allowed the fabric to cool slightly before carefully removing the paper.

This is what the inner circle of fabric looked like once I had removed the paper.

I then got my larger circle of fabric and laid it flat on the ironing board board before placing the inner circle with the side that has the adhesive on facing down. I then covered the circles with a damp cloth and ironed the samples for 10-15 seconds.

This is what the fabric looked like once it was fully dry and the inner circled had been adhered to the larger orange circle. I then repeated the same process above for the other 4 Suffolk Puffs.

I then got a matching needle and thread and I threaded my needle with double thread and hand sewed a even running stitch all around the edge before carefully pulling the thread to gather the fabric. Next I evenly spaced the gathers before tying a knot in the thread and finishing the Suffolk Puff. I followed the same step to sew all 5.

This is a close up of one of the fully finished Suffolk Puffs.

These are my 5 finished varied sized Suffolk Puffs pinned on my bubble/balloon skirt practice toile.

I love all the sizes of Suffolk Puffs and I have decided for my final piece Suffolk Puffs I will use the same objects to drew around. This will allow me to create exactly the same size Suffolk Puffs as photographed below, which are the perfect size.

I am now really looking forward to creating my Suffolk Puffs for my final piece with my specially selected fabric for this project.

Initial Design Ideas and a Vote

To create my initial design ideas I used the highlighter and biro method, which I learned about and experimented in Fashion Illustrations – Method 2, Series 2.

This method is really useful as it allow you to create a rough drawing in only a few minutes.

One thing that I particularly struggle with in creating design ideas is drawing arms, legs and feet. They did not turn out that well in the design below but I only drew them in a few minutes and when I create my final design ideas I will take a lot longer in drawing the designs so hopefully they should look better.

The first design shows a one cube pattern magic bodice block, with french knots and a short bubble/balloon skirt with Suffolk puffs all over the skirt.

The second design shows a one cube pattern magic bodice block and a medium to long bubble/balloon skirt.

The third design shows a one cube pattern magic bodice block, with french knots and a medium to long bubble/balloon skirt with Suffolk puffs all over the skirt.

The fourth design shows a one cube pattern magic bodice block, with french knots and a skirt with Suffolk puffs all over the skirt.

The last design shows a one cube pattern magic bodice block, with french knots and trousers with a zip and button at the front, rolled hems at the bottom of the trousers with Suffolk puffs all over the trousers.

I then created a digital tally chart so I could get my family members to vote, I used the data collection method of a tally chart as it is a very quick method to collect instant data rather than using survey, I was only able to get my three family members to vote due to Covid and online lessons, however this allowed me to move on to creating final design drawings straight away.

The results were two votes for the 3rd drawing and one vote for the last drawing. I then used these results as my final decision for what design I am going to go with so I am going to create design number 3.

Bibliography

London College of Fashion, 2021. How to Draw Fashion Templates No.2: Drawing with a Marker. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=d4OS1mOYjrE&feature=emb_title > [Accessed 15 March 2021].

Comparing the dyeing methods I have trailed

For my FMP I really wanted to explore some different and unusual dyeing methods.I have trailed 4 different dyeing methods, I wrote about how I created my fabric sample using each methods in Dry brush painting with acrylics onto fabrics, Dyeing fabric with salt , Ice dyeing and Experimenting dyeing fabrics using dye, sand and rocks.

I found that the first two dyeing methods I trialed did not really work how I had hoped, this was dry brush painting with acrylics and Dyeing fabric with salt. The dry brush painting was very blotchy and I did not achieve a lovely brushed effect, also another key factor I found about this method is once the acrylic has dried the fabric became very tough and rough and would not be a nice fabric to create a garment from. The other method that also did not have the results I expected was Dyeing fabric with salt, I thought that by using salt the sample would be specked as the salt would resist the dye. However, this did not happen and once the sample had dried and the salt has become crystallised, I rinsed the salt off of both samples and there was no pattern on the fabric it was just dyed a red and orange colour. I personally found these two methods unsuccessful, however there are two main factors that put me off of both methods even if the had worked which was for the brush painting with acrylics what the fabric felt like and for the salt dyeing the amount of salt that I would waste. I will definitely not be using either of these methods for my final piece.

The last two dyeing methods I experimented with was Ice dyeing and Experimenting dyeing fabrics using dye, sand and rocks both of these methods worked and I loved the outcomes of both fabric samples. I had never done Ice dyeing before so was really interested in experimenting with the method I found it pretty simple and straightforward to do. I absolutely love the final sample for my Ice dyeing, in particular that water marks in the fabric from the ice melting and then drying on the fabric, also other how the powdered dyes mix as the ice melt. The final sample I created from experimenting dyeing fabrics using dye, sand and rocks had a slightly similar affect to the Ice dyeing. However for this method I diluted the powdered dyes, where as in ice dyeing I used them in the powdered format. I also for this method I had to pour the dyes on so I had more control of how much colour I used, where I poured it and how it mixed, this final sample had blotches of colour as it didn’t mix with the other coloured dyes. I don’t think that the sand and rocks did anything but I cannot say that for certain, one factor I found hard about this method was trying to rinse off and remove all the sand from the fabric as it seemed to get stuck in the fabric.

I do love both of the samples and the process of both Ice dyeing and experimenting dyeing fabrics using dye, sand and rocks. However after comparing both of the process together I think that I preferred the ice dyeing process and sample slightly more than dyeing with sand and rocks. I will therefore be using the method of ice dyeing to dye the fabric for my final piece skirt.

Constructing my Bubble/Balloon Skirt – Toile

I loosely followed the a step by step to create a Women’s bubble skirt tutorial on a website called Easy Peasy Creative Ideas.

As all I needed to create this skirt was two different sized rectangles of fabric and two of each size. I did not need to create a pattern, all I needed was the measurements to create a skirt that fits me.

Once I had worked out the size of fabric I need to create my Bubble/Balloon skirt. I cut my fabric out I needed fabric for the outside and fabric that was slightly smaller than the outside fabric for the lining of the skirt.

So, I cut the outside fabric the width of the roll and 80cm in length.

I then also cut the lining 65cm wide and 70cm in length.

Below is a photo of the two pieces of calico laid on top of each other to show the size difference. I then cut another outside piece of fabric and lining for the back of the skirt.

Next I sewed along the top and bottom edge of both of the pieces of fabric for the front of the skirt with a straight stitch length 5. This will allow me to gather the fabric.

I gathered the top of both pieces fabric to approximately 35cm.

I then began to loosely gathered the bottom of both pieces of fabric bigger than 35cm.

I then pinned the top of both the lining and the outside of the fabric together ensuring that the top is evenly gathered.

I then turned the stitch length to 2 for more of a normal stitch length.

I then sewed along the top of the fabric joining the two separate gathered pieces together.

This is what it looked like once I had sewn it together.

I then turned it in side out so that I you could see the gathering at the bottom. I then started to gather bottom.

This when a slight problem occurred, as what was meant to be the top of the skirt became the bottom and vice a versa. This meant that the bottom of the skirt was only 35cm and the top was wider than 35cm. This did not really cause any issues the only thing I had to do to rectify this, was once I had sewn the skirt together I had to make the waist slightly smaller.

Next time I followed the same process but instead of sewing the top of the skirt first and then turned it inside out I will sew the bottom first and then turn it inside out and then finally sew it at the top. This will avoid the issue I had before.

Once I had gathered both of the pieces of fabric I then made sure all the gathers were even before pinning them together.

Next I sewed the two pieces of fabric together and removed the pins.

This is what the front panel looks like laid out on the table.

I then pinned the front panel to the skirt to see how it looks, I am happy with the length as it is a medium length.

I then repeated the exact same process for the back panel of the skirt.

Once the back panel had been sewn, I then laid the outside of the front and back facing each other.

I then left a gap on one side of the skirt to add the zip in later and then aligned the skirt perfectly with all 4 pieces of fabric pinned together all the way down one side of the skirt.

Next I sewed down that side.

I then followed the same process down the other side of the skirt, I pinned it and sewed it.

Next I turned it the right way round so it looked like this.

I then tried it on and I was very happy with the length but I had to hold it up as the skirt was too big at the waist and also I had not added my invisible zip yet.

Before I took the skirt off I made marks on the skirt of how much I need to get rid off around the waist so that it fits.

I then held the two marks on the fabric together and folded the fabric before pining it ready to sew.

Once I had sewn it I tried it on to see if it fitted and it did.

I then drew and cut my waistband 10cm wide by the measurement of the skirt at the top where the waistband will be attached with an extra 2cm seam allowance around all the edges.

When the waist band has been folded and sewn it will only be 5cm wide.

I then pinned the waistband to the top of the skirt before sewing it.

So once sewn it looked like this.

Next, I changed the sewing machine foot from a normal one to a zipper foot, I then sewed the invisible zip in the skirt and waistband.

I then folded, pinned and sewed the waistband down.

This is what the finished waist band and zip looks like.

This is the front and back of my finished Bubble/Balloon Skirt.

As I had already finished my pattern magic bodice block toile, I decided to pin the front panel on to my mannequin before putting on the skirt to see how they look together.

I love how they look together I just have to envision the final piece with colour and detail.

Finally, whilst the Bubble/Balloon skirt was still on the mannequin I pinned 3 of the large Suffolk puffs onto the skirt which I made previously and wrote about in Sewing Suffolk Puffs.

I think from looking at the Suffolk puffs on the skirt for my final piece I would not want them to be much smaller than these three.

Overall, I am really happy with how this turned out and I did not have any major problems that I could not overcome.

I am really looking forward to creating my final piece.

Bibliography

Easy Peasy Creative Ideas. 2021. Bubble skirt sewing tutorial. [online] Available at: <https://theseamanmom.com/how-to-make-a-bubble-skirt/ > [Accessed 20 March 2021].

Constructing my close fitting bodice block with Pattern Magic – Toile

I previously wrote about how I made my one cube pattern magic bodice block patterns and how I cut the pattern out of fabric in a post called Pattern cutting my close fitting bodice block with Pattern Magic.

I started to construct my bodice by sewing the one dart on my third front bodice block piece. I then also sewed the 4 darts on the back panel.

For this practice toile I am not hemming the armholes, the neck or the bottom edge. I have not cut off the seam allowance for the armhole and the neck as I am not sewing the front bodice block panel and the back bodice block panel together. I plan to sew this bodice block out of jersey so there will be no need for a zip. However, calico does not have any stretch so I would not be able to wear this practice version and leaving the panels separate allows me to still pin it to a mannequin.

Now that all the darts have been sewn.

I decided to experiment with adding interfacing on my pattern magic cube to see it it will give the cube a more defined cube.

Interfacing has two sides, one side is shiny and that side has the adhesive on so that is the side that needs to be in contact with the fabric, whilst the other side is slightly rough and has no adhesive on it.

First of all I got my light to medium weight interfacing and ensured that It was the right way up so I was drawing on the rough side not the adhesive side.

I then got a ruler and traced through the fabric around the 6cm by 6cm pattern cubes below. I accidentally only put interfacing on 3 of the 5 sides of the pattern magic cube as I forgot the other sides on the separate pattern pieces, I need to ensure that when I make my final piece I add interfacing to all 5 sides.

Next I remembered that when using interfacing you have to have the interfacing 1cm smaller than you need to avoid really bulky seams. So I drew a square 1cm inside of the original cube, this is the new line that I will cut the cube out on.

I then cut out all three cubes and placed them on the fabric pattern piece to check that it fitted within the cubes drawn on the fabric.

Before I ironed my squares of interfacing to my practice fabric toile, I decided to create a small tester to check that the bond together properly before using it on my actual toile.

Now that I was happy with how the interacting bonded to the fabric I ironed the cubes onto the pattern piece. I ironed the interfacing on the inside of fabric so that ideally it would not be seen however on this toile it did not go quite to plan and the issues I faced will definitely be rectified and overcome in my final piece.

The first time I tried to sew the 2nd and 3rd piece together of the front bodice block, it did not work as I had not perfectly aligned each individual notch and therefore the two pieces did not meet perfectly and alight at the bottom of the bodice also as I did not align the notches and the fabric perfectly you can see the seam allowance.

I then unpicked it and before I started again and made the same mistakes I asked my lecturer for some guidance.

This time it turned out a lot better however instead of sewing it to ensure that the cube was on the left side when I went to re-sew it I had flipped the patterns over and sewn it so it was on the right side instead and subsequently the interfacing ended up on the outside.

I then sewed the 1st pattern piece to the 2nd and 3rd pieces that had already been joined together.

This is the front and back of my finished practice toile.

This is the inside of the front and back of my practice toile.

I found constructing this my practice toile of a close fitting bodice block with Pattern Magic very difficult as you have to perfectly align all the notches and ensure that you have sewn right to the corners following the pencil line on the fabric before cutting into the seam allowance. This is definitely the hardest garment I have ever sewn and constructed.

I am also aware of the difficulties that come with sewing with a stretchy fabric, I have already chosen to use a jersey so I think I need to plan enough time to make this garment to incorporate two challenging factors sewing with a jersey and also sewing a difficult design.

Sewing French Knots Onto Fabric – Hand Embroidery

This sample is inspired by the photos I have taken of stars in the sky on evening, I wrote about this in a post called Worm Moon and Stars Primary Research. This is also inspired by Chesley Bonestell’s artwork, which I looked at in a post called Chesley Bonestell Research. In my photos and in Chesley’s 3 Mars pieces I looked at, the stars look like white dots and Chester represented the stars you can see from Mars with white dots.

I thought about what techniques I could use to represent this through a textiles medium. I then decided that french knots would be quite a good representation as I have used them in my work at GCSE.

I started by gathering everything I needed to create my french knot sample.

I cut a square of black jersey fabric, hand embroidery needles, white embroidery thread and embroidery scissors.

I then randomly sewed french knots onto my fabric. Below is a photo of my finished sample.

I really love the samples that I have created, I think this particular embroidery technique is simple but very effective and has turned out as I hoped, this may be an interesting technique to incorporate into my sample as it adds detail and texture.

Ice dyeing colour test on fabric

I previously created a fabric sample using Ice Dyeing, I wrote about it in a post called Ice Dyeing.

I found that as you have to place the powered ice on top of the ice and you do not dilute them it’s hard to tell what colour they are or going to be once on the fabric.

So I thought it maybe be a good idea to create and ice dye test on fabric, using the powdered dye that I might like to use.

This will allow me to choose dyes that are the right colours to suit my project.

I started by drawing 12 squares in biro on a large square of calico.

I then placed some paper towels onto the table to place my fabric on top of.

I then also collected my ice cubes and gloves.

Next I dampened my piece of fabric under the tap.

I laid my piece of fabric as flat as possible on the paper towels.

I then placed all of the ice cubes within the individual squares. Now it’s ready for the powdered dyes to be added on top of the ice cubes.

I sprinkled the powdered dyes on to the ice cubes and then recorded what the name of the dye was, so I knew what dye it is. This allowed me to label it once it was fully dry.

I also combined several different powders to see how they would mix.

This is a close up photo of one of the squares using two powdered dyes named Peach and Tulip Red.

This is how the tester looked as the ice began to melt.

After the Ice was fully melted the tester was transferred to the drying rack as the sample was sat in a pool of dye and therefore would not have dried.

This is what the paper towels looked like underneath the sample.

Then two separate pieces of calico was placed on the paper towels and a roller was used to gather up some of the excess dye.

This is my finished pieces of fabric that was used to gather the extra excess dye off of the table.

This is the final finished ice dye tester with the powdered dyes. I also added the name of the powdered dyes I used in black pen above each square.

The sample below is the same as the sample above I just added clearer digital labels so that I can refer back to it later.

I am very happy with the Ice dyeing tester I have made, I can now use this to give me a good idea of what are the most suitable colours and powders to use.

Experimenting dyeing fabrics using dye, sand and rocks

This is a really random experimentation with dyeing. As I am looking at the theme of Mars within Data I am particularly interested in Mars’s rocky terrain, with sand and dust. I was thinking of different practical ideas, where I could somehow incorporate sand and rocks. So I came up with the idea of loosely crumple dyeing with sand and rocks on top. I was interested to see if where the rocks and sand were on the fabric whether the fabric below would not dye or create an interesting shape. This is how the practical went ….

First of all I gathered all everything I was going to need for this practical, pictured and labelled below.

I started by dampening my large piece of fabric under the tap. Dampening your fabric before adding the dye allows for better dye saturation.

I then loosely crumpled it so it would fit in the container.

Next I got my jar of sand and scattered some on top of my fabric.

I then placed my rocks on top of the fabric.

This is a close up picture of the sand and rocks on the fabric before I added the fabric.

Now that I was nearly ready to start dyeing my fabric, I put 4 different coloured powdered dyes into 4 separate plastic cups, I then filled each cup about half way with water.

I carefully poured a bit of each dye onto the fabric so that the fabric was completely covered in dye.

I then left for about a day to soak and fully dry. Before throughly rinsing the fabric to remove and was away the sand.

Once it had been rinsed it looked like this, I left it to dry on some kitchen roll.

This is how it looked now that it was dry, it was quite creased from being crumpled up, so I ironed it.

Most of the large creases had disappeared, although it still seems to have a lot of small creases still.

I am quite happy with the final result from this unusual dyeing process. However, I don’t think that the sand and rocks did anything to change how it looks as I think some of the areas that have not been dyed has been due to the fabric being crumpled up.

I am still very happy that I undertook this experimentation, when I googled about using sand and rocks in the dyeing process I found absolutely nothing and this made me so much more interested in trying this.

I really like the look of the final result and I may potentially consider using this in my final piece.

Ice dyeing

I am really interested in exploring different dyeing techniques, so I have chosen to experiment with Ice Dyeing, which I have never done before.

I started by gathering everything I needed pictured and labelled in the image below.

The photo below shows a clear picture of the pots of powdered dyes, I thought that it was important for me to record this. If I do use this technique and experiment further I might want to know which dyes I have used.

First, I dampened my large piece of fabric under the tap. Dampening your fabric before adding the dye allows for better dye saturation.

I then laid the piece of calico flat on a table before crumpling the fabric up and putting two elastic bands around it to hold the fabric together. Next I placed the fabric into my container.

I decided to move the fabric next to one edge of the container instead of being in the middle so that when I added my ice cubes on top, covering the fabric they did not all slide off.

I then randomly sprinkled the 4 different coloured dyes on top of the ice cubes. After this I just left the ice cubes to melt.

This is a close up photo of the powdered dyes on the surface of the ice cubes.

This is the ice cubes after a few hours, they seemed to melt quite slowly.

I soaked up some of the red dye pictured next to the fabric with a piece of kitchen roll so that it did not dye the bottom of the fabric sitting in the liquid all one colour.

Once all the ice cubes had melted away and the dye had soaked into the fabric, I lifted the dyed fabric out of the container momentarily, so that I could pour away the rest of the dye in the bottom of the container. I then placed it back in the container for a few more hours.

After a few hours I took both of the elastic bands off and unraveled the fabric slightly so it could begin to dry.

The next day, when my fabric was completely dry I decided to rinse it out under the tap to remove all the excess dye.

I then left it to dry again on some kitchen roll.

Now that it was completely dry again, It looked very creased, so I ironed it.

This is what it looks like after it had been ironed there is still some creases but only small ones.

I absolutely loved this technique and I am extremely happy with the final result. I particularly like the water marks on the fabric from the ice melting and also as the ice melted the powered dyes mixed together.

I found it really interesting that you don’t really know how it is going to turn out as you just add the ice and dye and leave it to melt.

I am interested in potentially using this technique in my final piece.