Fabric Dyeing

Between traveling in August and drought conditions, I put dyeing aside for a time. But there were some nice days in early September, and I got a little more done.

I dyed a Seahawks themed t-shirt for a friend, and used some of the extra dyes on the first and third pieces here. I also tried a new blue violet dye (second), indigo (fourth), and a sage green (fifth). The sage was disappointing, so drab. 

Here is a progression from Deep Yellow to Grape. The last two didn't have as much yellow as I planned because I ran out of dye. I will have to get more Deep Yellow; not only was it a really pretty light orange by itself, but it mixed really well with other colors. 

I usually do pretty intense colors, but I wanted some lighter or medium shades. Here is Cerulean Blue in two lighter tones, and Blue Violet. The Blue Violet not only splits a lot, but with less dye in the water, left lots of white space.

Stack of all fabrics dyed summer of 2015. I also dyed multiple t-shirts, a dress for Ann, and over-dyed some older garments. 

I've really been wanting to try ice dyeing, and finally made a first attempt. This shirt was folded down the middle, then scrunched and swirled. I used some of my drabbest dyes, but ones I knew would split: Havana Brown, Khaki, Sage, Eggplant and finally Cerulean Blue. I thought it was a disaster in the making. It looked very dark brown, almost black, with just a few spots of pink during the entire washout process. But when it was done drying, I fell in love with the patterning. It still has a pretty drab appearance overall, but up close you see all the intricate color changes. I will definitely be trying this again on fabric, hopefully sooner than next summer. (I'm trying to work out how to set this up indoors.)