I love giving handmade gifts, and my brain ticks year round thinking of ideas for friends and family. One of my friends loves organic gear and indigo dye so I struck on making her a simple throw blanket! This is technically a no-sew project; I did serge the edges but that is more for aesthetics than function. I had so much fun making her a shibori indigo blanket, I made myself one too. Be sure to check out my full review of my favorite indigo dye kit !
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This is how it turned out! My mom was kind enough to hold it up for pictures. You can see that my dye lines aren’t 100% precise, but I love that it looks like I made it myself, since I did.
This is the version I made myself, with several more dye dips and a less obvious pattern.
Somehow I managed to keep my kids away from the dye bath, but they loved watching me make it and were very curious about how the colors changed. I finally let them use it once I’d taken photographs and it rated high in snuggle appeal!
The size is just right for an adult, too!
If I make you a gift, chances are I’ve worn it or used it so it could be blogged about, ha.
How To Make A Shibori Indigo Tie Dye Blanket
Supplies
- Prewashed 2.5 yards of natural/undyed sweatshirt fleece – I ordered * so I could make 2!
- *
- Wood piece or thick cardboard/plastic roughly 22″ by 3″
- 2 wood pieces roughly 5″ square
- Embroidery hoop or circular plate/container, for rounding the corners
- Scissors or rotary cutter
- Some type of measuring tape/cutting board
- Serger (optional)
Steps
1- You’ll be cutting the blanket to roughly 56″ by 67″. Be sure to lay your fleece down and make sure it is “on grain” before you cut a rectangle, shake it out and let it lay naturally without any wrinkles or pulls (you can see the bottom layer is way shorter than the top layer, after washing).
2- Use your plate or embroidery hoop as a template to round the corners off!
3- I opted to serge the edges of my blanket; fleece doesn’t fray so this is totally optional. I had initially worked on adding binding, spent hours ironing, serging, topstitching, and hated how it looked, it was too bulky! Another note; you can see here that my fabric is now light blue. I bound it, dipped it in an old indigo dye bath, it almost all washed out and I cut the binding out. Now would be a good time to start your indigo dye bath, it requires some sitting time between initial setup and use.
4- Fold your blanket in half lengthwise, and then use the longer wooden piece as a folding board, tightly folding it and then removing the board.
5-Fold that hunk of fabric into quarters (in half, then half of each half), and put the two smaller blocks on each end, press tightly, trying to squeeze all the air out, and secure with rubber bands. Follow the indigo dye instructions for dye-ing – now would also be a good time to get it soaking wet so the dye spreads more easily.
6- Here you can see what it will look like if your indigo dye bath is working right! Remember that it will wash up less intense than it looks, so consider redipping now.
7- Unwrap your folding and let it react with the sun!
8- Once it looks like this, it is ready to be rinsed and washed!
A few of my blogging friends have joined in for a week of Shibori Dyeing! * on Amazon and be sure to click through and see what they made:
Shibori Week
7/24
Sarah at Sewing with Sarah –
Stephanie at Swoodson Says –
7/25
Katie at Creative Counselor –
Sara at Radiant Home Studio –
7/26
Vicky at Vicky Myers Creations –
7/27
Maryanna at Marvelous Auntie M –
Ula at Lulu & Celester –
7/28
Laurel at My Heart Will Sew On –
Agy at Agy Textile Artist –
Here at Swoodson Says –
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