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.

Too Hot to Dye?

As a group, fiber artists and quilters are pretty hot.  As anybody who's ever been to Festival, or to one of those wild evening guild meetings or retreats can attest, nobody parties like a quilter.  However, in my not-so-humble opinion, no one is hotter than a dyer.

Now I know there are quilters who don't think of themselves as artists, and there are fiber artists who don't quilt, and of course, there are dyers who don't quilt or even consider themselves artists.  But there is enough of an overlap between the three that I can consider them all together.  And the hottest are the dyers.

Except for snow-dyeing, which most of us agree is kind of a novelty thing that we do when it's too cold to do the regular kind of dyeing, the procion dyes like it hot.  Especially turquoise and the other blues.  And, of course, that includes all the colors that include blue: purples, greens, browns.  Basically all the colors that aren't red, orange, or yellow -- which are pretty hot all by themselves.

Unlike some quilters, dyers aren't afraid of color.  We have all made mistakes when learning to mix colors -- some turn out to be happy accidents, and some, well, not so much.  But there is no bad hand-dyed fabric -- there is probably no bad fabric either, now that I think about it -- one person's ugly is another's "gotta have it."  But I digress...

The weather has been really hot this week.  Lots of people have been whining about it (not me, but that's another story).  So I decided I better get out there and enjoy it.  I had some dyes aging in the dye studio (also known as the northeast corner of the garage) and since I hate wasting stuff, I figured I would use them up.  If they weren't strong enough to create the rich saturated colors I crave, I would just over-dye the pieces with fresh dye another day -- over-dyeing is another reason there is no bad hand-dye.

I recycle plastic lettuce boxes, among other vessels, to do my "tray-dyeing."  So I scrumpled in the fabric, dumped on the dyes, and stuck the whole thing out on the front walk to bake in the sun -- also known as batching.

This morning, when I got up to wash out the dyes, I noticed a large teal-colored stain decorating the front walk. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the container and saw that it had gotten so hot, it warped and leaked!

I posed it next to a fresh box to show the difference.

The piece on the left is the culprit.  Even with those old dyes, I got amazing, beautiful, rich color!  I will have to over-dye the purple and the pink to make them periwinkle and fuchsia for a special order; but I just have to say... I am hot!

Oh -- and that piece at the top of this post?  It was a present from the hot dyers at "...And Then We Set it on Fire"  to celebrate their topping 100 followers.  Pretty keen, huh?

Empty the Wall for February

I finished sewing together all the LeMoyne stars and moved everything over so that I would have a nice space for the next project.  I'm working on a journal quilt for the Color Palette Challenge at 3Creative studios.

This is as far as I have gotten.  I pulled out these fabrics, then I pulled out a bunch more of the brown and blue stuff, but I decided I was overwhelmed and put all but these away.  That fabric on the top is a really dark green.

In between watching the Packers win the Superbowl, I managed a little snow-dyeing this weekend.  I'll put up pictures after I wash them out.

For more design wall posts, click here to go to Judy's blog.

The Last Snow Dye (Maybe...)

Yesterday morning, I woke up to this:

Which led to this:

Which led to these:

Chocolate brown, grape, golden yellow on scrunched cotton -- this is the only one with the crystalline patterns from the snow.  The rest have some nice colors that separated out, but not much of the snow effects.  The snow was pretty slushy and melted pretty quickly.  I probably could have piled more on top and gotten better results -- Oh well, next time (year?).

Scarlet and sapphire with a little grape

These two were both pleated, then I used sapphire, golden, and lemon yellow.

Scarlet, golden and lemon yellow on pleated fabric with snow on top.  It's much more orange than I thought it would be.

A little bit of snow was forecast and I toyed with the notion of prepping some fabric and dyes Friday night.  But I was afraid I would jinx any snowfall by preparing for it, so I didn't.  You can tell that Friday nights are pretty wild up here in North Sodom and Gomorrah, if soaking fabric and mixing dyes are on the program (why d'ya think they call it Wisconsin?).

Oh -- and I finally saw one of these!  Sorry the picture's a little fuzzy -- my camera doesn't really do far away and he (she?) took off when I got close to the tree.  So I guess spring is finally here.

Snow Dye Parfait

Shirley, a cyber-friend who blogs here, posted some pictures of some wonderful snow dyes that  looked like they had veins like marble or granite.  She said that her mother had done them.  She kindly shared the directions with Beth who shared them with me.

I took those directions and combined them with the technique from Terri Stegmiller of Three (then Two) Creative Studios for One Bucket Dyeing and came up with the idea of Snow Dye Parfait (I'm really sick of snow and we just keep getting more; I do this so I don't go snow-insane).  

I set some containers into the bottom of a bucket and cut a piece of snow-fencing (that I lifted from a construction site a while ago to use for a dye-painting resist) to set on top of the containers so the fabrics would not sit in the excess liquid.   Then I  layered the soda-soaked fabrics in the bucket and poured a different color of dye on each layer of compacted snow, remembering color-mixing rules so I didn't get mud-colored fabrics.

I let the whole thing hang out overnight in the garage.  The temperature is around 30 degrees farenheit, so the snow was kind of slushy and packed well.

From the bottom up, I used Sun Yellow, Sapphire, Grape, Boysenberry, Golden Yellow, and Turquoise dyes in this order with another dribble of turquoise on the very bottom layer.  It really does look like a delicious snow cone.  Makes me think of summer...

Next post:  the results.

Continuation of the Life Cycle of the Snow Dye

Here I present the pupa stage of the snow-dye.  For this session, I mixed up lemon yellow, golden yellow, fuchsia, grape, turquoise and some black.

     This half yard was folded in half an scrunched with fuchsia and turquoise dyes poured over -- it's a little too pink for me -- I will probably over-dye it with a little golden yellow.

The whole yard was folded and scrunched with dyes poured over in a rainbow sequence.

This one was scrunched and twisted with dyes randomly poured over.  I like the depth the black dye lends.

This half yard is yellow, turquoise, and black -- there is a little orange showing, I wonder if I dripped a little fuchsia on it, or if that's the golden yellow with the black (someday I should learn to take better notes).    

 The whole yard was accordion folded with yellow, turquoise and black with a couple of drips of very diluted fuchsia or grape. -- I like this one -- it looks like a canyon or a mountainside to me.

This one was accordion folded in the center of the fabric and the ends were scrunched. Turquoise, yellow, purple -- those are great lavender tones in between the "trees."  

I am saving the "adult" phase of the life-cycle for later -- a snow-dye cannot become an adult and realize its full potential until it is made into something.  It comes into its own only when made part of a larger thing.

"By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece."

-Miguel de Cervantes 1547 - 1616

The Life Cycle of the Snow Dye

Like other living things, snow-dyed fabric has its own life cycle.  Following is an attempt, in words and pictures, to describe the growth and development from beginning to end; in this case, from egg to pupa stages.

This is a picture of the egg stage.  Note that there is no color as yet.  The soda-soaked fabrics are scrunched in their shells.

Here is a shot of the incubating fabrics, each covered with a soft coat of fresh snow.  They sleep and grow, nestled in their plastic shells.

This is what we call the young larvae or nymph stage -- note the bright colors are visible now.  This is where the sense of humor develops and they begin to enjoy jokes about bodily functions.

Here are the mature larvae -- ready to be rinsed and washed.  Notice that the snow has melted and dripped through the fabric, with color pooling in and around.

Next post:  the emergence of the pupae

More Snow Dyeing

These are pictures of the snow-dyes from the other day. I left the box o' boxes in the garage overnight and when I went out there the next morning, they were frozen solid (duh). There was no dye wicking, no color anywhere except in the snow on top of the fabric. So I brought the whole box o' boxes in and set it in the corner of the family room on top of a heater vent next to the lemon tree. This morning, after I did the family laundry, I washed them out.I love the greens and purples in this one. The brown is pretty interesting too. It has a kind of kaleidoscope thing going on. This one is my favorite.

This was grape, scarlet and golden yellow.

Mostly scarlet and lemon and golden yellow.

I love hand-dyed stripes. This doesn't have a lot of the crystalline effects from the snow, but it's still pretty cool. The turquoise is really vibrant here. I didn't get much green from the yellow and blue mixing -- because they were frozen?

These two were accordion folded before the dyes were poured on and don't look any different from any other lwi hand dyes. I like the mirror effects I get from the folding.

I didn't have any trouble with the turquoise, but I think that was probably because they batched on top of a heater vent. The temperature was nice and warm there last night. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised with all of these -- They didn't look like much before they dried and I was expecting to be disappointed.

Odds and Ends

I did some more snow dyeing -- tried some grape and turquoise along with the scarlet and lemon and golden yellow. We'll see how this turns out.

It has been brutally cold this week -- below zero overnight and barely making it into the teens during the day. I thought that the snow would be easy to dig up after I got through the top crust, but it's crusty all the way down -- or at least for the first couple of feet.

The snow shovel couldn't do it, so I had to find a small garden shovel and use that to hack at the snow. That warm spell ( it was a balmy 36 or 37 degrees f -- that's like 1 or 2 C) must have melted the snow all the way through, because it was like chopping solid ice. It broke up nicely after I worked at it for a while though. Yes, that's a large bone next to the tray o' fabric. It's stuck there. My neighbor's dog comes over and steals it and his people bring it back.
After all that stabbing and whacking at the snow, I was almost too tired to mix up the dyes and pour them over the frozen snow/fabric piles. Almost.

"Any idiot can face a crisis -- it's this day-to-day living that wears you out."

-Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

After all that, I was almost a bad dog mama and almost didn't take her out for her walk --- almost...

During the Great Studio Cleanup that occurred over the last two weeks, many treasures were unearthed -- including the floor. Much forgotten fabric (actually, it wasn't forgotten, just MIA) was discovered and is now neatly folded and organized on shelves. All the goodies that make my stuff unique -- paints, powders, stamps, inks, pencils, and other cool ephemera -- are stored in labeled, covered bins and easily accessible for those midnight can't-sleep-art-projects.

Last year, for Mother's day, my kids gave me a pair of these quilting gloves. I hadn't tried them, and they wound up buried under a bunch of stuff in the months following that exalted day. My attitude toward such aids has always been a bit skeptical -- just grab a hunk of that quilt and make it move -- we don't need no stinking gloves -- but I tried them out on the challenge quilt and WOWEE ZOWEE! They WORK! Not as well as advertised, I couldn't thread any needles and scissors (and - horrors - I assume, rotary cutters) were admittedly clumsy, but they grabbed that little quilt and moved it. Very nicely. I have some much bigger projects coming up, so we'll see if they work as well with the old-fashion safety-pin basted large quilts.

So if you have a bunch of, say 35, odds and ends on the table and 34 fall off -- what are you left with? An odd? Or an end?

Snow Dyeing Part 3 - Who's Got the Blues?

I do! These are half yard cuts of cotton.

Navy

Royal -- I like the purples that came out in this one

And the greens -- Navy, Royal, and yellows

And the golds: Lemon Yellow and Golden yellow.

There is some pink in this one -- because I washed it with the reds?

And my favorite -- a whole yard of all the colors I mixed up:

This looks to me like planets exploding, as in some celestial event. I'm tempted to layer this with batting and backing and make it a whole cloth quilt. Or maybe add a border of the navy piece then a wider border of pieces from all the colors. Or maybe something else?