Reprinted from Tie-Dye: Dye It, Wear It, Share It, copyright (c) 2013 by Shabd Simon-Alexander. Published by Potter Craft, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

We feature Shabd Simon-Alexander’s gorgeous hand-dyed scarves in the July/August issue of Living. Her beautiful creations generated such a buzz around the office that we had to find out more about the artist, her process, and her inspiration. Lucky for us, she has a new book out, Tie-Dye: Dye It, Wear It, Share It, full of how-to projects for the new and experienced crafter, information about different dyeing techniques, and insight into the incredibly rich history of dyeing. We caught up with the artist below:

Can you tell us a little about your background—how did get into hand-dyeing?

I come from a fine-arts background (photography, sculpture, and textiles), and my introduction to dyeing was by chance. . . . I went to a party in the community garden next to my East Village apartment, and they had a picnic table laid out with stuff for tie-dyeing. I started and I just didn’t want to stop! It wasn’t even the look of tie-dye that I liked; it was more about making it—it’s so much fun and so rewarding. So I spent a year playing around and developing new techniques to create dye patterns that were more grown-up and modern, beyond what I had seen before.

Photograph by Shabd Simon-Alexander

Are people surprised to see what you call “tie-dye”?

People often have an image in their head of what they think tie-dye is, but in reality it’s just a method/artistic medium open to personal interpretation, like painting, sewing, singing; it is the individual artistic and design choices that make it what it is. The technique has been around for over 2,000 years and is known all over the world by different names: shibori in Japan, bandhani or leheria in India, plangi or tritik in Indonesia, adire in Nigeria, amarra in Peru, zha ran in China. Most of these terms translate literally to something close to “tie and dye.” I understand people’s misconceptions—I myself wasn’t attracted to most of the stuff we traditionally think of as “tie-dye”—but I love the process of making it. It is really joyful, and so I set out to create fabrics that I love with this timeless technique, and that’s how I developed my fashion label. I also love teaching tie-dye and hand-dyeing in workshops; one of the best parts is that while using the same exact technique, 10 people will get 10 completely different results based on their own tastes. You can see in my book that there is really a broad spectrum of design possibilities using tie-dye as the starting point.

Photograph by Shabd Simon-Alexander

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