Sunday, February 3, 2013

Snow Dyeing with a Twist

Over at the ...Fire Blog this month, TieDye Judy has a post about scrunch dyeing (here).  I decided to take advantage of our wonderful snow (and the freezing temperatures that make it wonderful) and do some scrunch dyeing.  But wait!  There's more!

Of course, I have to add my own twist -- this time in the form of folded shibori dyeing called itajime.  

A lot of people who do snow-dyeing have fancy racks with screens set up so that the snow and dye can drip through the fabric.  I usually just put the snow on top and let the fabric sit in the soup of melted snow and dye while it batches in the up-cycled plastic lettuce boxes I like to use for dyeing.


But I hate wasting dye and I thought: what if I used fabric as a rack for the scrunched fabric?  I figured I would get pastel coordinating fabrics with interesting patterns to go with my snow-dyes.  So I folded up some soda-soaked fabrics and laid them in the bottom of the boxes and scrunched up more to sit on top.


I packed on a layer of the powdery snow and poured my dye concentrate over.  Then came the hard part...letting them batch overnight.

I put the boxes in a really big plastic box and left them in the front hallway overnight.

I prefer to use pure colors for most of my dyeing because I like to mix the colors myself.  But for snow-dyeing, I purchased a couple of already mixed colors -- a couple of browns and some blues -- because I never know just what is going to come out in the wash.


Of course I got fabulously patterned snow-dyes.  


But the real surprise was underneath.  No pale coordinates here.  I got these amazing bits.   I may add some of these to the to-be-overdyed-later pile because they might benefit from some more color, but maybe not.

I am linking up with Nina Marie at Off the Wall Fridays.

8 comments:

Terri Stegmiller said...

Great idea and great results.

Judy Ferguson said...

You got some really beautiful samples. I did some too and I love to use them for flowers.

Beth@IHaveANotion.com said...

WoW.... some great results both top and bottom of the bin!!! I am just going to have to make it happen next winter.

Quilt Rat said...

Beautiful results!!!! Hate snow but love snow dyeing! I did some this weekend too, But instead of mixing, I just sprinkled the dye powder on top of the snow.....and yes, I do the "soup" thing too :-)
I know you will make something gorgeous with your new fabrics!

Lynne said...

Wow! Isn't experimenting fun? And isn't it delightful when the results of the experiment are good and so much better than expected!

Sara said...

This *almost* makes me wish for snow. I love the look of hand dyes. What type/brand of dye did you use?

Lynn said...

What a great idea! They are beautiful. And I love your upcycled dye containers too.

PersimonDreams said...

LOVING these snow dyes! I'm definitely going to have to try this - NEXT Winter hopefully....