As promised, here is the first snow dyeing technique I tried this past week. This one is a bit messy, but I like the results.
If you missed yesterday’s blog post which covers the prep of snow dyeing, check it out HERE.
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Now that the fabric has soaked in soda ash for at least 30 minutes, it’s time for the fun! With your gloves on, take each piece of fabric and place in it’s container. For these three pieces I just scrunched the fabric into the container. If you want to fold your material, here are some ideas of how to fold and tie.
Now go out and get some snow.
With your gloves and dust mask on, open up the Procion MX dyes and mix 2 teaspoons of the dye into you snow bucket. As for how much snow, just guess how much will cover that one yard of fabric.
Cover your fabric with the dyed snow.
That picture shows 042 Raspberry on the left and 076 Cobalt Blue on the right.
Now is where patience comes in. Cover and move these to a warm area away from kids and pets.
If you want to keep them warmer, cover them with a blanket and let them set there undisturbed for 24 hours. Karen suggested putting them on a electric blanket which I don’t have. I did not get the split from my colors like Karen does. (Karen uses one color and her resulting fabric breaks out all of the colors included in that color.) Even though this room was warm, the containers were not as warm as they would have been had they sat on top of an electric blanket.
After the 24 hours, put on your gloves and rinse the fabric (I rinsed them separate – not together) with cool water, then increasing to warmer water. When the water is almost clear, prepare a soap soak. In 2 to 3 gallons of very hot tap water mix 1.5 teaspoons of Dharma Professional Textile Detergent or Synthrapol. Add the fabric and let soak for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes rinse again with warm water. I then put the fabric through the washing machine on a short cycle on hot to make sure the dye was set and then popped it into the dryer. These directions are for cotton. If you use other fibers the rinsing is a bit different.
I am only able to take a picture of half of the yard of fabric, but it gives you an idea of my finished product. Click on these to take a little closer look.
The color did split a tad as I can see pink and some blue.
You can see much better on the blue the texture the snow creates. I wish you could really see the texture close up. In some areas I can see the snow crystals. It is really pretty unbelievable.
I don’t see any split except light and dark blue. Again, I think the solution needs to be warmer over the 24 hours.
With using two dyes I get a whole range of colors. I love the texture and the surprise I get with this technique. Every piece is different. As for the amount of dye, I used 2 teaspoons per yard of fabric, but experiment. If you don’t want such dark colors, go with less.
Tomorrow I’ll show you the other technique which gave me some more interesting results. Oh, how I love this snow dying!
Thank you for sharing this. I’m going to share this to the ladies of our church. This would be a great thing to make one of these days when we have a lot of snow. But we need to plan now to have the dye on hand and have the pans on hand also. But this would be great to do even for young women to do. PICK your color and have some fun.
Donna Scrapp’n Nana
nana2beof5@gmail.com
http://scrappnana.blogspot.com/
Donna, That’s what I did – I got everything so when we had a snow, I had it all together. It would be a great time for anyone. You might have everyone get their fabric ready beforehand, so all they have to do is soak it. Fun! If you do it, I hope you’ll blog about it or at least let me know. Come back tomorrow for the other technique which is even easier!!
Wow, these turned out beautiful!! I love the blue one especially! I don’t think we’ll get any more snow this year (at least I hope not), but I am saving this idea for next winter 🙂
Kristina, It’s only February! As I write, we are again getting more snow! It was only suppose to be a dusting – looks like more than that. I still have my soda ash water and I’ve got a bit of fabric so I might try today again if we get any more worth using.
Hi Lyndah,, When you are snowdyeing try raising your fabric up and let it drip into the pan below. I wrote the article for the Quilting Arts Magazine Oct/Nov 2009 with step by step instructions and if you go to ProChem’s blog they have a video on snowdyeing with pretty much the same instructions as I wrote. These pieces look good but you will be amazed in how they will look not sitting in the dye to batch. Have fun!!! Judi
Judi, I had read about that technique on the Internet but wanted to try it without it lifted up first. I’ll try that next time. However, I really liked the second technique better since I also used less dye. Thanks for dropping by.
Thank you for sharing this technique. I had never heard of such a process before, but I sure have lots of snow to try it with!
Roberta, It is so much fun! Be sure to check out the technique #2 and the ice cube technique. Thanks for dropping by.
Hi. If I recall correctly from a conversation I had with a tech at ProChem or in something I read there, not all dyes will split out into several colors. Someone at ProChem could probably tell you which ones will and which won’t.
Janice, I did contact them on their blog and this is what they replied – “There is no list of colors that will split. Our advice is to use one of our in-house mixes and not one of the pure MX colors. So, sampling will be important, before you dye larger pieces of cloth.” But I was happy the way they turned out anyway and they did split a tad. Thanks for dropping by.
oooh! That sure looks like the northern lights! Terrific. Come on snow! : )
~Monika in Canada
Monika Kinner-Whalen / MySweetPrairie recently posted..Contemporary Embroidery in Progress
Hi Monika, Thanks. Did you check out my ice cube dyeing that you can do now? Thanks for dropping by. I’m off to check out your blog. Lynda