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Cost: $ $ $ $ $

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Time: 4h00

A new twist on traditional Japanese craft!
Playing around with dye colors and patterns, I came up with a nice variety of new fabrics to create some fun Kanzashi flowers.

I started with squares of white cotton fabric that I dyed solid colors and then added shibori folds to some, batik treatments to others and finished off with a little bleach patterns on the rest. Then the fabrics are over-dyed to create some super double color effects.

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Sarah Kim favorited Super Dyed Kanzashi Flowers 01 May 21:18
Leigh C. favorited Super Dyed Kanzashi Flowers 16 Oct 19:53
Mandy D. favorited Super Dyed Kanzashi Flowers 19 Jul 15:14

Step 1
I started out with a square that I dyed Kelly Green. After it was washed and dried, I folded it into 1" accordion pleats and bound it with 4 rubber bands.
Step 2
After soaking it for a few minutes in warm water, it was immersed into an Evening Blue dye bath. This is the folded shibori technique which gives the fabric striking striations where the rubber bands are placed.
Step 3
My next experiment was with a water-based batik resist. Using a fine metal tipped applicator bottle, I simply doodled fun swirliques and dots all over two pieces of fabric that had been previously dyed Lemon Yellow. When the resist dried, I over-dyed one piece in a Petal Pink dye bath and the other in a Tangerine dye bath. The resist is really so much fun because it's just freehand drawing and with the fine tipped applicator bottle, it's easy to get really super details
Step 4
Now the opposite of the resist technique is a combination of bleaching and over-dyeing. Where the resist technique is based on starting with a light fabric color and adding a design that will block more dye from adhereing, the bleach technique is based on removing color from a dark fabric leaving lightened spaces for a second color to over-dye. Here I dyed the fabric with Purple which is a fairly dark color. Using the fine tip of a bleach pen, I drew stripes and dot patterns across the fabric. When the bleached areas have lightened, the fabric is washed and dried before over-dyeing. I used the Petal Pink for this over-dye.
Step 5
There was a section of the flower that I wanted to keep a solid color so I chose to dye some fabric Petal Pink with a hint of Scarlet for a nice pop of color. You can see I used those for the bottom petals. Such a sweet color!!
Step 6
And here's my assortment of color candy to make these kanzashi flowers! Kinda nifty, huh?
Step 7
I'm not gonna give the directions of constructing the kanzashi flowers but you can check out the book, Kanzashi In Bloom, where I got my inspiration. The author has a great video tutorial on her site as well.
www.craftypod.com/2009/09/16/now-with-video/

Basically, all the petals are individually folded from 2½" or 3" squares and then strung together in one straight line.
Step 8
Then the last and the first petals are sewn together and tied. As you can see I alternated large and small petals to give a nice outline to my flower. After it's assembled, the petals can be opened or left pointy.
Step 9
Did you notice those sweet matching purple pearl beads in the center of the flowers? Well, guess what, I dyed them too with the same dye! This is a real fun trick to make color coordinated accents for projects. I used 1 Tbsp Purple dye in a small 1cup container and immersed them in very hot dye bath for about 10 minutes or so. After a nice color is achieved, simply rinse them off and dry them.
Easy-peasy and oh, so cute!!