Shibori

I am finding my present job sucks out my energy and shrivels my soul. Today, despite the call of the garden and other "shoulds", I decided to nourish my spirit and do some shibori. I tore 3 metres (yards) of fabric into a dozen fat quarters, and soaked 6 of them in warm soda ash (dye fixative) while I folded and tied the other 6. I have numbered all the pieces, and made notes so I can compare the results.

The designs were all out of my head - I wasn't following patterns in a book. This was quite a complicated one that i dubbed "The Scorpion". First, I tied knots around 3 small peach stones. Then I folded and tied the rest of the fabric. It came out looking like this:
Below are the 6 dry pieces after folding and tieing. Then I removed the wet fabric from the soda ash and put the tied pieces in the bucket to soak while I worked on the wet pieces.
See the numbers attached by safety pins?
Here are the wet pieces. All 12 are different. I've just poured burgundy dye on, and I'll wait a couple of hours for it to batch before I remove all the tied bundles, untie them, rinse and then wash them.

It took me around 2 hours to fold and tie the 12 fat quarters - shibori is a slow craft, not a "fast food" type of activity.