Too Much Snow?...Dye!

I've been meaning to try snow dying for a long time...but usually I think about it during the summer. LOL  We'll, last week someone in one of the Facebook groups I belong to mentioned it, reminding me that it was on my list of things to try, and as luck would have it we're up to our eyeballs in snow this winter.

I started by Googling 'snow dying', watched a couple of videos to find out what I needed to do, and then I got started.  While my muslin was soaking in the soda ash solution, I prepared a few skeins of crochet cotton and then added them to the soda ash solution too.

While that was soaking, I went outside with a big basin and filled in up with snow.

Bin 1

I set up three basins for the dying:

Bin 1. yellow, fushia, scarlet
Bin 2. yellow, turquoise, blue, green
Bin 3. yellow, blue, green, purple

These first images show the snow covered with the procion MX dye powder, most of which has quickly dissolved into the snow.

Bin 2

Bin 3

You're supposed to cover it and leave it for 24 hours, but you know I couldn't do that.  ;o)

...So here's what bin 1 and 2 looked like about 30 minutes later (don't know why I forgot bin 3):

Bin 1

Bin 2

And then a while later...you can see the little blue baskets I put in upside down, to raise the fabric and skeins up out to the melting snow/dye.

bin 3

bin 1

bin 2

Okay, this is scheduled to post at midnight and I'm off to bed.  I'll show you the reveal in Friday's post.  See you then...

Rainbow Dyeing...

I know you're waiting to see the results of my indigo dyeing...and I'm chomping at the bit, wanting to get to it, but I promised my friends I'd wait until they came up and do the indigo dyeing with them. But, I just had to get into some messy fun, so I did some dyeing with Procion MX dyeing this week instead.

It's the perfect time of year to do dyeing because I can work outside on the picnic table and I don't have to worry about getting dye stains all over.  I discovered that an old wallpaper tray was a great size and shape for the zip lock bags of fabric so they were all neatly contained while I waited for them to process for 24 hours.  I mixed the dye in old mason jars, but I wouldn't recommend them.  I need to get some plastic bottles like these!

Anyway, after I rinsed all the fabric I couldn't resist taking some pictures of it hanging on the line.

Notice that Casey is still her beautiful cream coloured self!

Even the ziploc bags get rinsed and hung on the line for the next time I dye fabric.

And here's my stash!  The fabrics under the stacks were made using the left over dye after I finished the measured rainbow dyeing.

a light gauzy cotton (usually used for men's turbans)

cheesecloth

recycled Egyptian cotton bed sheets

I can't wait to start creating with all of these fabulous colours!

Hand Dyed Fabric and Threads

This week my friends Heather, Doeteke and Ann came up to the cottage and we had some messy fun dying a bunch of cloth and threads.  We ran into rain, so we ended up working inside the cover of the woodshed but all in all we had a great time and managed to have enough good weather to be able to hand our treasures out on the line to dry.  We all ended up with really beautiful things to add to our stash.  I can't wait to get busy playing and creating with my new fabrics!

(L-R: Doeteke, Heather, Me (Linda) and Ann mixing the powdered

dye and getting ready to play!  Either that or preform surgery!

Smiling for the camera.  Honest, there are smiles under those masks!

Drying on the line.

Some of our treasures drying on the line.

My new hand-dyed stash!