Crafting Some Super Dyed Kanzashi Flowers!

The idea of making kanzashi flowers sounded like fun but was wondering if I could put a new twist on this traditional Japanese craft. The challenge I gave myself was to start with just plain, white cotton woven fabric and create my own custom colors and patterns for my lovely fabric flowers. 

So I started with squares of 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. I can't tell you how childlike giddy I was playing with all the colors and patterns that I could dream up. Sooo much fun! 


Since this was pure playtime for me, there aren't any specific supplies and recipes but I'll give you some insight on the colors and techniques that I used. Maybe it'll inspire you to experiment too.

I started out with a square that I dyed Rit Kelly Green.  After it was washed and dried, I folded it into 1" accordion pleats and bound it with 4 rubber bands. After soaking it for a few minutes in warm water, it was immersed into a Rit Evening Blue dye bath. This is the folded shibori technique which gives the fabric striking striations where the rubber bands are placed. There's a full tutorial of the shibori fold technique here.

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 Rit Lemon Yellow. When the resist dried, I over-dyed one piece in a Rit Petal Pink dye bath and the other in a Rit 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. Click here for a batik dye tutorial. 

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 Rit 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 Rit Petal Pink for this over-dye.


There was a section of the flower that I wanted to keep a solid color so I chose to dye some fabric Rit 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!!

And here's my assortment of color candy to make these kanzashi flowers!  Kinda nifty, huh? 

I'm not gonna give the directions of constructing the kanzashi flowers but I'll give you some great links at the end to the real fabric folding masters so you can get your own kanzashi flower power going. It is super fun to make and here's just a couple assembly photos to whet your appetite.

All the petals are individually folded from 2½" or 3" squares and then strung together in one straight line. 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. 

Oh, I almost forgot! 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 Rit 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!!

For the real skinny on making your own lovely kanzashi flowers, head on over to Craftypod, where Diane Gilleland has a super video tutorial for you. She's the author of the book, Kanzashi in Bloom, which gave me the inspiration to start on my quest for kanzashi enlightenment.

You might also be interested in seeing Gabrielle Pollacco's tutorial for using different fabrics and different petal styles. There really are so many ways to make them and that's what makes it all so gosh-darn fun!