... 2 thumbs down. The idea of dyeing frozen soda ashed fabric intrigued me so I decided to give it a try. I placed my frozen fabric on netting over a container so it didn't sit in the liquid. I squirted dye all over it and let in sit in the cold garage for 20 hours then brought in back in the house for about 5 more hours. When I started to rinse out the dye, I noticed that there was a whole area where the dye never penetrated. This is butt ugly. My dye rags come out better looking! I have a bunch of choices here... I can try to discharge the right side and do some deconstructed screening on the left, or I can cut it in half and use the left side for a dye rag and just cut up the other side as needed. I think I am leaning towards that. I really do not need another piece of fabric that needs so much work to be salvaged. ... or I could give it away to someone who thinks they can fix it up.
Things did get better. I rarely use premixed dyes but I fell in love with Grape so I have been using it. It does some really lovely things. I had just a bit left from the crossover dyeing and wanted to use it up so I added it to some yellow hoping for a nice brown. When it was batching I wasn't real happy with it and still wasn't thrilled when I was ironing it, but when I hung it up on my design wall I had all sorts of ideas pop into my head. This reminds me of the cave paintings at Lascaux. I am happy with this piece. I even wrote down the measurements and might be able to duplicate it.
It is yet another rainy, gloomy, chilly day here... it's getting depressing. Maybe I will go back to my hand stitching. Got the sleeve on a piece yesterday and need to make a label for an upcoming show.
Things did get better. I rarely use premixed dyes but I fell in love with Grape so I have been using it. It does some really lovely things. I had just a bit left from the crossover dyeing and wanted to use it up so I added it to some yellow hoping for a nice brown. When it was batching I wasn't real happy with it and still wasn't thrilled when I was ironing it, but when I hung it up on my design wall I had all sorts of ideas pop into my head. This reminds me of the cave paintings at Lascaux. I am happy with this piece. I even wrote down the measurements and might be able to duplicate it.
10 comments:
why not overdye the "butt ugly" piece? that would be easy...maybe w a lightish blue?
Yes - overdye, overdye, overdye. One of my favorite things to do and then you can discharge and get incredible cloth.
I agree -- overdye -- you could paint thickened dyes over the boring parts.
Maybe... I guess I better order a real mask if I am going to discharge.
I, too, would over dye it. I think the fact that you had no snow to use as a resist made a difference. But I did use snow and I still wasn't thrilled with the result.
If you should happen to try snow-dyeing again don't use the rack. Let the fabric sit in the snow-melt dye liquid until the snow is all melted. I use a chopstick to poke the fabric down in the dye water to avoid big white areas. I noticed on other blogs that the people that are not happy with the snow-dye method use a rack of some sort to keep the fabric up.
Sorry you had a bad experience. I live in central Texas, so I don't get much chance to do snow dyeing :-) But don't don't don't get rid of that ugly fabric! Some of my ugliest pieces have turned out wonderfully when I played them more--overdyeing, stamping, cutting up and reassembling, etc.
Ditto on the overdye. Just throw it into any old dark color and be done with it. Then, you can deconstruct with Thiox paste through a screen with some resist or other and worst case, if you still hate it, give it to me - LOL.
Sherryl... I am not a 'dyer'... but I wouldn't quit on this.. just overdye and if it still is uggers, I will share it with Rayna!
You just had bad luck with your ice dyed fabric. When I use this technique I do not put the fabric over netting or so. Check out my blog. A couple of days ago I posted a comparison between snow and ice dyeing.
Don't throw this piece of fabric away, but overdye it.
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