For those that may be less Star Wars obsessed, these are Jawas:
The first step of the process for creating a Jawa is dyeing the monks cloth used for the robe. I purchased 8 yards to be on the safe side. Due to the amount of fabric, and the smallness of my one bedroom apartment, this ended up being quite comical. I used 5 boxes of rit dye and a big old storage bin, inside my bathtub.
There was so much the only way to agitate the fabric with the dye was with an old broom handle.
\(Oh hey my hair doesn't look too bad. Not shown: how warm it was since to get enough light I had to use the heat lamps in my ceiling.)
After rinsing it for what literally seemed like forever, and drying it for an equally long time, this was my end result. It's only about half of the fabric.
(My cat Spunky Hufflepuff chose to pose when I was taking the picture. Sometimes she's just dorky like that.)
Next step: SEWING AND WEATHERING!!
Love this idea! When I get around to updating my much-neglected website http://www.casagordita.com/fatacc.htm , I definitely want to link to it. Looks like it's going to be a great resource.
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion for you: next time you need to dye some fabric, you can do a whole lot better than Rit dye. I do tie-dye, and most serious tie-dyers use fiber-reactive Procion dyes. You can get colors much more vivid and saturated than with Rit, and after the first wash, it doesn't fade (with Rit I got fading and bleeding every time I washed stuff). There are a couple of extra steps and caveats involved (they only work on natural fibers), but Procion dyes really aren't hard to use. I get my dyes and supplies from Dharma Trading http://www.dharmatrading.com/dyes/dharma-fiber-reactive-procion-dyes.html?lnav=dyes.html --nice people, very helpful, and they have an amazing selection of dyes and fiber arts materials.
Thanks again for the interesting blog!