A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Time to start dyeing

When I am at home, the kitchen is my dye studio. This does not really give me space to dye big pieces of fabric. So I took advantage of being able to use my friend's big studio.
This is a 3-yard piece of cotton fabric which I had soda soaked. In a big container I place several smal containers to raise a platform.


Lots of yoghurt cups were tied into the fabric with rubber bands:


A layer of snow was piled on top of this:


And about a cup of dye powder was sprinkled on it. I used Red Turkey (ProChem) and Charcoal Grey (Dharma).

Covered this with a thin layer of snow.


And placed the container on the studio floor to batch. This is what we found when we entered the studio the next morning:

Apparently the container was not watertight. Luckily nothing in the studio was damaged and the cotton used to wipe up the mess turned into some nice pieces :-). This is how the fabric looked when the melted snow was gone:


Time to remove the rubber bands and to rinse, wash and iron the fabric. Here is how the fabric turned out:



It was so big that I had to take 2 pictures to show the whole fabric. I sandwiched it and am now in the - time consuming - process of quilting it.





11 comments:

  1. Love the patterns made by your yogurt cups, Wil! We just got our first snow of the season last night, with more to come today. Hmmmm.... might have to do some playing before it melts!

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  2. I love it, except the part where you found out the container was not water tight.

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  3. Cry me a red river those are beautiful results! Yogurt cup -- I would have never thought of that!

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  4. A CUP of dye powder??? That seems like a lot for only three yards of fabric. On top of which, most of it was on the floor and very little remained on the fabric. Hope you used some soda soaked fabric to mop up the mess. :)
    Diane

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  5. Oh yes....never waste dye!! Some of my "mop cloths" (soda ash soaked pfd) have turned out to be some of my favorite pieces! AND....then we marked the container as LEAKS!! in permanent marker!

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  6. I'm with Diane, I kind of gasped when you said you used a cup of dye powder. I use less than 2 tablespoons to dye that much fabric the absolute darkest shade. I'm surprised it didn't come out darker. Glad you got more fabric from the "runoff"!

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  7. As the fabric is placed on a raised platform the dye powder has contact with the fabric for only a short time. This is the reason that I use more dye powder than with regular lwi dyeing.

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