Snow dyed fabrics

We had a big snow storm a few weeks ago, so that meant a bit of snow dyeing was in order.

I did not iron these prior to photographing them.

This was folded in half and put on a PVC pole and scrunched, like for shibori. Then I laid the pipe flat on my rack, for snow, then sprinkled powdered Procion dye.

I used hotel key cards clamped to either side of a folded piece of fabric.

I used empty yogurt cups and rubberbanded the fabric on them. I was hoping the circles would be more distinct.

The rest were just scrunched and layered "parfait" style with snow and powdered dyes in big buckets.

There were quite a few more small ones. I bought a bunch of linen and cotton napkins at the thrift store a while ago, so threw a bunch of them in as well.

I am working on some new mixed media pieces and hope to have at least one finished so I can post pictures next week.

Low-Immersion dyeing

Here I was thinking I was trying immersion dyeing for the first time, and while digging around on my blog, I see that I not only did immersion dyeing, but used the same ancient Createx dyes! That post is here . Too bad I didn't document how I did it the first time.

And the funny thing is, doing it the other day, I decided I really like low-immersion dyeing and it may be my go-to method for using Procion dyes. Less messy, I don't have to stir big tubs of fabric, and don't have to wait for ice or snow to melt.

For this low-immersion dyeing, I used my ancient Createx liquid dyes I had bought used, for pennies, a few years ago. I got sick of them taking up room in my dye box, so decided to use them up by doing low-immersion dyeing.  They are so old that I figured they wouldn't be very strong so I mixed roughly 1/3C of the liquid to make 1 cup of dye. I somehow had lot of brown dye, and did use some Procion Brown, Golden Yellow, and Antique gold with it in two of the containers.

For my dyeing method, I put one cup of dye in the bottom of the container, squashed one yard of damp fabric into it, then added a second cup of a different dye color on top. After 20 minutes, I poured in one cup of soda ash water (3 tsp soda ash dissolved in 1 cup of water).  The two containers (that had Procion colors mixed in) were rinsed out after two hours. One container had folded fabric and one had a scrunched fabric. The dyes did not get into the folds of the folded fabric and left a lot of white. Also, the brown seemed to be more of a maroon and had a red/pink cast to it. The scrunched fabric turned out great with lots of color variation. (Colors used: Createx Brown; Procion Brown, Antique Gold, Golden Yellow). The folded ones are getting re-dyed today.

 Detail

The other containers I let sit for 24 hours. I did this since the dyes were so old, and also in one of them I used black, and I had read it is best to wait 24 hours when using black.

I don't think these dyes were as stale as I thought. The fabric in the containers that sat for 24 hours ended up not having a lot of variation.

Createx brown and magenta

 Createx blue and black

Createx blue and purple

I really like these fabrics, enjoyed immersion dyeing, and am glad to have those Createx dyes out of my stash (they weren't getting any younger, and unlike wine, do not improve with age).

Over-dyeing with low-immersion dyeing

The other day, I did some immersion dyeing and did not like how these two folded pieces turned out. My brown dye ended up very pink (it was very old dye).

 Detail.

 I decided to over-dye them using low-immersion dyeing, but scrunched them, instead of folding them.  I put 1 cup of Procion Olive Green (2 tsp in one cup of water) added my scrunched damp fabric, then poured in 1 cup of Procion Golden Yellow (2 tsp in one cup of water).  I let it sit for 20 minutes, then added my soda ash water (3 tsp soda ash dissolved in one cup of water). I let it sit for 2 hours, then rinsed the fabric out.  I should have probably waited a bit longer, but still like the results and it is a huge improvement.  I would definitely cut these into smaller pieces, as I still don't like how strong the line pattern is from the first dye.

Ice dyeing

I had a 20 lb bag of ice in the freezer and I had the itch to do some ice dyeing again.  I can tell autumn is coming and the time to do these outside activities is now. (I have done ice and snow dyeing inside in the winter, but find it is much easier doing it outside).

I wanted to make some blue sky type fabrics, and thought I would try some green/brown/gold fabrics as well, which are not colors I typically choose.

I did not take pictures of my process, but I use large tubs, and clip aluminum window screening to them. I soak my fabric in soda ash (I planned to soak them a half an hour, but they ended up soaking 4 hours). I wrung the fabric out, then squished/scrunched it and set it on top of the window screen covered tubs. I add ice, so all the fabric is covered. Then I sprinkle Procion dyes on until all the ice is covered (while wearing a mask to avoid breathing in the loose particles).  I have used liquid dyes before, but I like the results better with powdered dyes

Here are my results.

Oddly, I used Procion aqua marine, turquoise, teal, bright blue, and medium blue, yet my fabric looks more purple than blue. This is 100% cotton sheet.

Detail.

 

I also did some 60%cotton/40%linen, but the patterns where less distinct since it has a looser weave. Also, I got a lot of concentrated spots, which happens when there is not enough ice.

This is silk dupioni that was previously painted with Jaquard Textile paint, you can see the original fabric in this post. It was looking very pink after it dried, so I thought I would over-dye it blue, and it would look more purple.  This picture makes it look very blah, but in person it kind of looks like aged copper (with purples and blues).

In the second tub, I used Procion Bronze, Golden Yellow, Rust Orange, Antique Gold, Avocado, and Olive Green.  This is the first time I have used Olive Green and I absolutely love it. On my ice dyes, it became a gray green that I really like.
Cotton.

Cotton

Silk (I only soaked the silk in soda ash for 15 minutes. It is my understanding the soda ash can damage silk).

I had a couple other pieces, but they were similar. I am somewhat sad that my blue fabric looks more like purple, but I loved discovering I like Olive Green, which was unexpected!

Snow dyeing fabric

We got 3" of snow last week, and it gave me the itch to snow dye some fabric. The next day we got another 3", so I had plenty of snow to work with!

I love the clearance fabric bin at Joann's.  I picked up some bleached muslin, Kona PFD, black Kona, cotton buckram, etc. from the clearance bin. I washed them, then soaked them in soda ash water. The black Kona, I tied up with rubber bands and put it in a color remover solution. It was then washed, then soaked in soda ash water.

Here are my dye "buckets". The two round pots have two layers of fabric in them, the one on the tray on the right only has one.  I do have strainers/pasta inserts in the pots to prevent the fabric from sitting in the melted snow water. The tray on the right is a broiler tray (for craft use only!) that has a drain pan.

I sprinkled my dye powders on directly, but liquid Procion dyes could be used as well. I typically let the snow melt completely before washing out my fabrics. I let these sit overnight.

 Cotton buckram:

 

 Buckram Detail:

Muslin:

Detail

Kona:

Bleached Muslin:

Black Kona, color partially removed, then snow dyed.

My Favorite! ROCL Renaissance

Detail:

I think the orange/blue Kona may need another round!

Over dyeing fabric

Last summer, I tried to do some ombre dyeing with linen. I did a jade green one, a blue one, and a purple one.  I am not a fan of the jade green color and the ombre on the purple didn't turn out well. I  decided to over-dye a portion of the jade green one and the purple one.

 I love to remove some of the color using Rit color remover. I make a batch (outside, because it's stinky), wet the fabric with water and scrunch/rubberband them, and throw them in the bucket. I threw in some other fabrics I thought needed some help as well.

While these sat in the color remover, I made up my dye buckets. I used Azure, Marine Purple, and Cobalt blue with black added.

 I went around the house collecting any fabric I though needed a dye job. 

I removed and rinsed the fabrics that were in the Rit color remover, after about an hour. I left the rubberbands on while rinsing as I wanted them to create a pattern when I put them in the dye bucket. The jade green one was now a lovely aqua color so I decided not to over dye it. .

Here are my fabrics after removing them from the Rit color remover. The dark gray blob on the right was the purple linen with the lighter blob next to it was the jade. The multi-color blob on the lower left ended up pretty cool in the end.

I must not have mixed my dye powders well enough because the Azure and Purple fabrics have a lot of magenta spots on them. Some of the fabrics in the Azure bucket must have been blends as they are now a gross 80's country blue color and I didn't bother to photogragh them.

Here is a before picture of the Jade Green Linen. This picture does not show the true color at all.

After picture, the dark green spots are the true original color:

Purple Linen before:

After, my purple dye was a much redder purple. I find this fabric way more interesting now.

 

This fabric was scrunched in the pot and I guess I didn't open it up while it was dyeing, I really like the texture it created. This fabric is super soft too.

The fabric on the left is my favorite color-wise, I love these deep rich blues. The one on the right was rubberbanded put in the Rit Color Remover before dyeing. It had previously been ice dyed and was nice on one side but the other side was the icky jade green. I rubberbanded the sections I liked so the green section would get the color removed and be re-dyed.  I like how it turned out even if a lot of the original "pretty" colors were removed.

Snow dyeing fabric to create circle designs

There are some blogs that I read on a weekly basis and when I was cruising blogs last week I saw this great idea on Carol R Eaton's blog. She is rubber banding items in her fabrics and then snow dyeing them.  I love the circle design she got with the wiffle balls. We had a bit of snow last week so I tried it out.

I had a bunch of styrofoam balls for another project. I also had some balls I made from aluminum foil (not perfectly round, but round enough). 

I did one large fabric with larger balls.

And a smaller piece of fabric with smaller balls.

Of course I throw on a couple other fabrics while I'm at it.

Here comes the snow!

With dyes added. I just sprinkled them on and was probably too heavy handed.

After the snow melted.

Close up.

 Here is the fabric that had the smaller balls.  I think it turned out great and plan to make it a field of flowers.

 Here is the one made with the larger balls. I think I should have wrapped the rubber bands a bit tighter around some of the balls as there are areas with no pattern.

 Close up.

This piece I just twisted and kind of rolled up (no balls).

This is a piece I just scrunched and laid across the whole screen, so it got warm and cool colors (no balls).

I love this portion and think it looks like trees. I can't decide whether to cut this section out or leave in the green and red area that is above to have it be more abstract. What do you think?

 I also dyed some cheesecloth as well.

I really enjoy snow dyeing as it is very easy. It was nice that I could do it outside as it was 60 degrees the day after the snow. I have some fiber projects to work on today and hope to have an interesting project done by Friday for posting.