Friday, September 6, 2019

Shibori Quinn Tops

So, you might have noticed... I've been into shibori and indigo dye recently.

Here's another set of shirts I sewed up with the fabric I dyed!


For these tops (one for me, one for my sister), I used a length of white cotton lawn from my stash. The lawn was a bit sheer in white, but I figured it would take the dye well and become a bit more opaque.


I cut the 2-yard piece of cotton lawn into 4 pieces, each of which we dyed using a different shibori techniques. My idea was that we would take these 4 pieces of fabric and blend them into a garment (or two if I could swing it!). Check out this Instagram post for an image of the different fabrics before I chopped them up.


Honestly, I thought the cotton lawn would take the indigo dye better, but it turned out quite light in the end. Very faded denim-y. Not at all like the deep, rich blue I got with the rayon lycra I used for my Pony Tank. But still pretty!


I immediately thought of the Style Arc Quinn Woven Top pattern for mixing and matching these pieces together in an elegant way. The pattern is designed perfectly to play around with stripes, colorblocking or print mixing, like I've done here.


You might remember my colorblocked Quinn from last year; I used scraps of linen/rayon left over from other projects, and I love it!

For these Quinns, size 16 for me and size 12 for my sister, which worked well. 


I tried to use all 4 fabrics in each shirt, but had to make them slightly different from each other due to fabric constraints and the results of my fabric Tetris

I love how the fronts turned out! I think my only regret is not being able to use more of the deeper blue piece on the backs; the backs don't have as much contrast as the fronts:


But I love them anyway... so much fun to mix and match these different prints into 2 garments. And how satisfying to get 2 tops out of 2 yards of stash fabric? Each of these tops is totally unique and that makes me so happy!

I also love that each of us dyed 2 of the pieces that went into making these Quinn tops. It feels like a fun group project. 


I hope you're not sick of my shibori adventures, because there are many more to come...