Tie-dyeing Blue Jeans

I had a couple of pairs of jeans that I wasn't wearing because they had blemishes in strategic locations, as well as some swapped jeans I picked up at the Maker Faire recently. And while I have dozens of tie-dyed shirts that I wear all the time, none of my jeans are (intentionally) tie-dyed. Time to change that.

Color on Color

I often get questions about dyeing garments that aren't white. I've done it a fair amount, but it's a little tricky. You have to remember that the colors are ADDITIVE. So if you start with a yellow shirt and put blue dye on it, you get green. Purple on yellow gives you brown, and so on. Also, the colors you put on may seem a little dull compared to how they would look on white. So it's worth trying, because you can get some interesting effects (blue and purple on a pale blue shirt looks good), but you may not get the results you expect or hope for.

Here, I did a crinkle pattern on a pair of light-blue 100% cotton Levi's (left) and the exact same crinkle pattern on a pair of medium-blue Gloria Vanderbilt partly-spandex stretch Amanda jeans (on the right). I smushed them both up into wrinkly pancakes, along with the shorts below, and I dyed all three pieces side-by-side with the same colors. I actually squirted the dyes on all three pieces with the same strokes of each color.


The Levi's give a much more vibrant and almost crystalline crinkle effect than the Vanderbilt jeans. The lighter original color of the Levi's gives a much better contrast with the dye colors than the darker blue, though I like both. The interesting part, though, is that the colors on the Levi's jeans look much crisper and sharper than on the Vanderbilt jeans. The denim of the Levi's is thicker and much stiffer than the Vanderbilt denim, giving the crinkles more definition. I think the thicker denim also prevents the soda ash from soaking in quite as well into the Levi's, leaving more undyed fibers in the denim (both pairs soaked for the same amount of time), helping the Levi's look a little brighter in the center parts of the crinkles.

The cargo shorts are from Lands' End in the light greyish color they call "light stone". My daughter managed to spill chocolate on them in strategic places almost immediately, so they were definitely in need of revamping with dye. These were the third piece in my crinkled assembly line. The light grey is almost white, but not enough to really brighten the dye colors.


My daughter likes them more now than in the original grey color, of course, and likes the hoodie I did for her while I was at it.

Stripes Front and Back

This is another medium-blue pair of the Vanderbilt jeans (my usual). This one really demonstrates the effect of working with multiple layers of thick, stiff fabric such as this denim.

Since the fabric is so thick, very little dye bleeds through from dyeing the folded piece on one side, so it's easy to get thick-and-thin effects on the stripes by dyeing a little less or more on the two sides of the folded piece, and it's hard to get dye all the way to the center of the pleats. In this pair, I folded first down the center of the jeans so the back is on the inside, then I pleated the whole thing starting up from the ankles. I like the multi-thickness effect, though.


Here is how they look on (and one of my current favorite shirts--bright enough to hurt the eyeballs!).


And the back...I like the two-toned effect on the legs here (mine, not Lacey's).


A Few Bonus Shirts

I dyed a few shirts for my daughters while I was at it. The third shirt from the left was twisted up like a hank of yarn and then dyed in stripes across it. The shirt on the right was a spiral started near the right shoulder.


Lacey Is at It Again

Such a big help!


My squeaky toy!

I'm Not Dead Yet!

A friend of mine gently chided me today for no longer posting to my blog. And well, things have changed recently that leave me a bit less time for blogging. That is, I've gone back to having a day job as a product manager after being on leave of absence for a year and a half. It's kind of a night and early morning job too, since I live in California and the development team is in India and Orlando. I've already been on two conference call meetings that started at 5am, and one that ended just before midnight!

It's also summer, and that means I have another job too: chauffeur. My kids go to a plethora of day camps, where they are doing all sorts of fun things like building go-karts, studying and mimicking Egyptian art, creating claymation animated movies (short ones), face painting, and all sorts of other things that are making me hideously jealous as I drop them off and head for the office!

I'm not done creating, though, and I'm not done blogging. I've been doing lots of tie-dye lately with lots of people (including this year's first grade class!), and I never did blog about all of the shoes I've made so far (and now I'm going back and modifying one pair where I just didn't like the way it came out).

As for blogging, I actually have about ten blog posts partially written and waiting for me to upload just the right photos (with and without dog) and add just the right links and tags. I've gotten to the point where I start a draft post in the middle of the night if something comes to me that I just have to write about. I'm having a hard time keeping up with my inspirations, though, both in crafts and in blogs. I still have a tie-dye wedding present to make, several months after the wedding (I'm allowed a year after the wedding! Really! But it's slipping away...). But I'll get to it, someday. And a leather-wrapped coffee mug... but hey, I did finish that quilt, finally!

But for now, since I don't have any late-night meetings scheduled, I'd better finish this off and head for bed. And since I know I'll hear about it if I don't, here are a few pictures. With and without dog.

Official Gratuitous Dog Picture

Here she is, just being her cute self.


Other Recent Stuff

Somebody liked my daughter's discharged jeans so well, she wanted a pair just like them. Several months later, I finally got around to it. My daughter did that tie-dyed shirt herself.


Here I am at this year's Maker Faire, in one of my favorite tie-dyed shirts (funny how the ones I like the best are some of the earliest ones I made). I was trying to complete a circuit and light the lightbulb using nuts and nails to go across the tube in the middle of the board. I succeeded, and they said they hadn't seen anyone do it that way before. I must be nuts...


And here is the result of the 6th Annual First Grade Tie-dye Project! I'm so proud! Even better, the Mountain View Voice published my picture of them (that's about a hundred kids) on page 6.


And now, off to bed!

Making Plans to Make Tracks

Faire warning: The Maker Faire is coming back to San Mateo, California, May 30 and 31 (the weekend after Memorial Day weekend).

I have written about the Maker Faire before. I practically start hopping up and down when I think about going to it. In fact, I was lying in bed thinking about it and decided I had to start writing about it again before I'd be able to get any sleep, so I got back out of bed.

The Maker Faire has a huge variety of displays, exhibits, demonstrations, activities, and shopping opportunities that appeal to a wide variety of tastes and interests. You'll see the quaint, the bizarre, the practical, the artistic, the robotic, the gothic, the stylish, the geeky, the eco-minded, the homey, the flaming (literally), the tiny, the giant, and the flat-out "huh?", all in one place.

Tips

Last year the faire was bursting at the seams of the San Mateo Expo Center. In the afternoon, the ticket and backpack search lines were really long. Get your tickets in advance from the website, and arrive early in the day.

Carpool! There is parking, but the extra parking is quite a hike away from the entrance.

Wear comfortable shoes. You will be doing a LOT of walking.

Take a water bottle. You'll need it.

Take empty shopping bags. There is a lot of very tempting stuff there.

Food is not the strong point of the Maker Faire. Eat well before you go.

Take a camera! The sights are amazing, and your friends back home won't believe you without pictures.

Study the Maker Faire schedule and map on the website. They have lots of special events, and different parts of the faire close at different times (as I found out the hard way last year).

Keep an open mind. You'll never know how much fun it is to ride a wooden bicycle until you try it!


See you there!

More Inspiration: Maker Faire in San Mateo

For the third year, the Maker Faire in San Mateo was geek-and-crafter's Heaven! It is put on by Make Magazine and Craft Magazine. It's a hands-on free-for-all for participants to show off their work, convert new hands and minds to a favorite hobby, sell stuff to feed their hobby habits, and generally have a good time. Attendees like me can try new things, marvel at artwork and crafts we'd never have thought of, and learn from experts.

Textile Crafts

There were a lot of textile-related crafts around, such as knitting, crochet, sewing, needle felting (I learned that at the Maker Faire last year!), and batik. People were sitting around crocheting animals from wool yarn, needle-felting fruit, and refashioning all manner of clothing on the spot. Other people were making leather masks or showing purses made of aluminum can tabs.

A woman named Teresa Mak had an interesting display called Batik Chic where she showed tools and materials she uses for her batik artwork. One thing she showed is that if you use pure beeswax for the batik, you can't get the traditional cracking effect because the beeswax is too flexible. You need to use a combination of waxes such as paraffin to get the cracked effect.

Interestingly, with all that textile crafting around, I didn't see much tie-dye. I didn't see any actual exhibits of tie-dyed materials or techniques (though maybe I didn't look hard enough). I saw a lot of people wearing tie-dye, but they were mostly kids, and the patterns were almost all (purchased) swirls. Pretty pedestrian.

What Possessed Them to Do That?!

There were a lot of odd exhibits where my immediate thought was "but why?" My immediate mental response, of course, was "why not?" and "because it's fun!" Displays in this category included "power tool drag racing" where people race oddly-decorated power tools with sawblade wheels...


...and "muffin cars" where people drive around sitting in what look like giant cupcakes...

...or "art cars" covered with marking pens or other objects.


There were many art forms that would never occur to me, but that were really beautiful, such as the giant sculptures made of rusty steel cables.

One of my favorite displays was Sisyphus V by Bruce Shapiro.


Fabulous People-Watching

The people watching at the Maker Faire is fabulous! Many of the people there become their own artwork, with brightly-colored hair, elaborately trussed-up dreadlocks, and fabulous one-of-a-kind clothing concoctions. Other people dressed as they would for any other summer festival, in khaki or denim shorts, comfy t-shirts, sandals and hats.

I think the highlight for people and fashion watching was the Swap-O-Rama-Rama Fashion Show. In a great example of "reduce, reuse, recycle", many of these folks had spent the day creating new garments from old garments swapped by attendees (I swapped some of my old red stuff for somebody else's old blue jeans), and then got up and paraded them on the catwalk stage. Many of the results were both outlandish and beautiful.


This cool set of outfits is by Velvet Valentine (the 2 pictures above and the following picture).

These bicycle-based outfits below don't look very comfortable (note the metal gears in the center of his chest), but they sure are striking!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - Again

Finally, my personal prize for "Best Use of Recycled Materials" goes to the Portable Guerrilla-Gallery for their giant tent made of old billboard covers and other salvaged materials. All the art inside was made of recycled materials as well!


Now I need to figure out what to do with all those recycled blue jeans I picked up at Swap-O-Rama-Rama!