Discouraged but not disappointed with shibori

I've been stitching away the past two nights working away on some shibori pieces. I'm trying to use up some of my old hand dyed pieces that aren't very exciting and trying to give them new life.

So this was a piece that I had done some shibori 'folding' on that was an ok, piece...I traced my Callishibori leaf templates .
Did my stitching...

Then I overdyed...problem being...I didn't have any dark blue (which I wanted) so I ended up using the little black Procion dye I had and I added some Lapis. The piece is really dark and not much contrast.

Same with this piece...not much contrast so I'll really have to jazz it up with some contrasting threads and/or beading/stitching. Who knows! I did four pieces but the other two you can barely see the stitching.

Because I was a little disappointed with my results, I stitched some more on a piece of hand dyed orange (bright orange!). This piece at least had some contrast with it. I overdyed using Fire Red.

The camera shows this as a bright red but really it's quite dark and turned out nice. Hard to see this little guy but I think he looks like a bug! hmmmmmmmm Maybe my Art of Nature journal piece for Sept.! Some beading and he just might come alive!

I really like the patterns I got from Callishibori.com and now I think I'll do some stitching on white fabric (duh!) or some very pale hand dyed and order some Indigo or dark blue dyes.