Ice-Dyeing: The Main Event...

Well, I needn't have worried about the Palomino Gold dye color being too orange to work with the blues- it's actually quite pretty. Though it looks different in nearly every area it appears, ranging in color from apricot to yellow-gold. This is a tee-shirt back that  received all of the dye colors.

And this is a piece of the PFD cotton fabric folded to form a mandala style radiating design.

A long rectangle of cotton shows the bands of color that were applied over the ice.

I did lots of odds and ends of fabrics in this ice-dye batch, and included a couple of squares of cotton I received in a fabric exchange. They were printed and hand-stamped with paint. This one now has an added layer of color from the ice-dyeing.

Here's the second square of hand-stamped fabric from the exchange. This one began as a white-on-white fabric print. The floral print acted as a resist to the dye, so the white flowers became more evident once the fabric was dyed. I'm happy with how these turned out.

One other item that's been waiting in the sewing room to get used somehow is this once-white silk ribbon. It took the dyes very nicely. I've already used it as an embellishment, and I'll show you this project in another post. It's not quite finished.

The shirt front took a lot of the Palomino Gold color, including those two blooming "things" seen at the bottom. I think I'll look better walking away as the back is the prettier side.

Just for reference, I'll include this photo of the dye application "before". It's so interesting how different the colors look once the dyeing is complete. If you're interested in knowing more about ice dyeing, Lynda Heines has a very good online class called Icy Delights. She offers so much authoritative information on amounts of dye to use, effective color combinations, tools and supplies, and lots more. Plus she has a dedicated Facebook page for added inspiration from her work and that of her students.

Ice-Dyeing: The Prelude....

It looks good enough to eat, right? Sort of like clunky Shave Ice. But no, it's my latest round of ice-dyeing. After dyeing with my friend on my recent visit to Pennsylvania, I decided there were some odds and ends of fabrics in the sewing room that also needed to meet up with more color.

After soaking the fabrics in soda ash solution to make them receptive to the dyes, I squeezed out the excess solution, and scrunched and folded the fabrics. Some had resists like rubber bands and clothes pins added. Then I placed them on plastic mesh stretched and clamped over top of a storage tote. A plastic garbage bag is poised to slide up and over the ice and fabric.

The dyes were mixed (safety note: I was wearing a mask and gloves while handling them) and poured into squeeze bottles ready to apply over the ice. The fun thing about ice-dyeing is how unpredictable it can be. I've got three colors- Mermaid Dream, Palomino Gold, and Kingfisher Blue. The dye powder is concentrated and looks very dark, so it's impossible to tell what they will look like on the fabric, or how they'll blend together. Some dyes even fragment into their component colors, so there can be traces of colors you'd never expect to see.

I bought a 10-pound bag of ice, and used almost all of it to cover the fabric pieces. Now that fabric pieces are under the ice, it's even more of a surprise as to where the dye colors will wind up. As you can see in the first photo, I applied the liquid dye solution in bands across the ice. Now the whole shebang is covered with the plastic bag to "batch" for 24 hours- no peeking. I will say that when rinsing out the dye bottles, the Palomino Gold looked way more rusty-orange than I anticipated. So I'm a little concerned that using it with blue may be a regrettable choice. I was expecting it to be more yellow. I'll show you the results anyway. If they're not good, we'll all learn something! So we wait. 

Meantime, I can share some of the results from our Pennsylvania dyeing day. It amazes me how differently the pieces turn out based on how they are folded, where they were positioned when the dye was applied, and how much of a resist was used. All of these examples are PFD (prepared for dyeing) cotton done with the same three colors. In this case, the colors are Forest Green, Celadon, and Kingfisher Blue (all from Dharma Trading). 

Same dye colors, but look at the difference in intensity.

And this one- did I mention gray? No. That's because we didn't use any. And yet one of the dyes must have had gray as a component because here it is.

And this- Forest Green apparently has some yellow as a component. Some dyes are sold as pure colors and will not fragment into other colors. We didn't use any of them. The oohing and ahhing as each piece is revealed is part of the fun of ice-dyeing. I hope we'll be oohing and ahhing over my current batch. That Palomino Gold has me worried. Stay tuned!

Hurrah for The Red, White, and Blue...

Here's a button stack necklace I made just in time for our nation's birthday celebration on the 4th. I've been sidelined for much of June with an unanticipated health challenge, so the blog has been quiet. I'm using my time "out of the loop" to sort, reorganize, and cull the supplies in my sewing room. It doesn't look much better, but things are labeled and stored in a more manageable way.

Just before things took a turn health-wise, I was able to visit a quilting friend in Pennsylvania- a very beautiful section of our country. This is the view of The Endless Mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania taken from her deck. The air was crisp and fresh, and the greens so lush. It was a treat to see the deer and birds that visited her yard. Very refreshing after Florida's heat of early summer.

While there, we had our own 4-day fiber art retreat in which we did ice-dyeing of fabrics and gelli printing. I also got to go through her stash and assembled this necklace for her birthday. I brought it home to complete and will mail it to her soon.

And why make one necklace when you can make more? So this is hers, too. I showed her how to make the puffed yo yo and the beaded yo yo, and added some other charms to round this piece out. It's ready to travel back to Pennsylvania soon.

Happy 4th of July!