Shibori Surprises

One of my art quilt groups, FANE, has started a new Renga project, but this one has a twist.  We are each to make one half yard of fabric, starting with white, and do an all over surface design. It can be dyed, stamped, foiled, paint sticked, painted, etc.  Any surface design that does not include stitching, beading or fusing.  After we make our half yard, we are to cut it in half and at the next meeting those two halves will be given to other people to do another layer of surface design.  Then those two pieces will be cut in half again and they will be passed on.  At the end we will each get back our original fabric, but now in four pieces with three layers of surface design.  Are you confused yet?

Still having fond memories of my shibori workshop with Jan Newbury-Meyrs in my head, I knew that my half yard would have to be shibori.  Jan's recipe calls for two tablespoons of dye, so I went with a color of which I had a lot......turquoise.

For my first batch I did three pole wraps on 4" diameter poles and one rope wrap. They are L to R, diagonal pole scrunch, rope scrunch, diagonal pole wrap with string and another pole wrap with string.

At the end of the required 75 minutes in the dye pot, they were washed and ironed. I loved the color!  You are only seeing a small section of each, but they are scrumptious.  I couldn't bear throwing all that dye left in the pot down the drain, so I made up some more pole wraps and left them in the dye bath overnight.

This is the second batch.  In person there is not as much contrast between the two batches.  I think they are still yummy, though more delicate.  Again I couldn't bear to throw the dye away, but I didn't want any more turquoise. So I added some yellow to the pot, hoping for lime green.

When these came out of the dye bath they were bright Kelly green, not what I wanted, but still pretty. You can imagine how delighted I was when they came out of the washing machine this delicious lime green. The markings are not as distinct as they were on the turquoise, but still quite lovely.
And, yes, I did throw the dye away after that batch, but I wonder how long I could have kept it going.
In Jan's class it was dumped after the first use, but then she wanted sharp definitions.

Now my big dilemma is which one I should  use for the Renga project .  Decisions, decisions.