I just toned down my ‘Summer ablaze reds‘ weave with overdye.

The original silk weave (see first photo) with the handpainted warp was really beautiful but I wanted a more cohesively toned cloth. My first option is always to overdye. With overdyeing it’s important to know how another colour will affect the existing colours in the cloth …in other words, just barge in and have a go.  I just went with another lighter but richer red to meld the colours (see the overdyed cloth in the second photo).

As so much work has already gone into the dyeing and weaving of the cloth as it is, I also didn’t want to deaden it’s vitality so used a shibori clamping effect over some sections so they remained insitu. The clamping technique was also a suble one so the cloth has more of a weathered and abrash appearance. Just what I like! You can see in the last photo the hints of a purple/red weft and the white of the Kasuri tussah silk weft peepeing through. The charcoal coloured yarns throughout the cloth were unaffected.

The only problem with getting nice results like this is the nagging temptation to overdye every uncertain looking cloth in the house. Perhaps overdyeing is one of the answers to uncertainty.