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[ View the Fotopage entry | View the complete Fotopage ]
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[ View the Fotopage entry | View the complete Fotopage ]
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| Sunday, 29-May-2005 00:00 |
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Tie-Dyeing Part 1
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I promised photos of today's dyeing, and I deliver. Might not be very many since most of the time was spent mixing dye, soaking the items to be dyed, and then doing the actual dyeing. V. difficult to do photos with dye and gloves on your hands. So here are just a few.
Want to know the steps in the process? I shall tell you, loverly woman that I am. (Um, yeah, just watched the Lemony Snickett movie, sorry. Damn, was Jude Law LITERALLY in every movie made last year or what? That man is EVERYWHERE. Sheesh!)
Um, where was I? Oh, right, the steps.
Okay, so you'll need gloves for this. You can use the yellow household gloves or the latex kind, but REALLY, you want the gloves. Not only can the chemicals used be hard on your skin, but this dye is permanent and WILL dye your skin. In fact, the dye will dye anything it touches - counter tops, skin (hands, arms, legs, forwarms, feet), toilets, tubs, fabric, anything. Don't believe me? Look at my photos above and see what happens when you don't know you have holes in the latex gloves. For this reason I recommend the yellow household ones. But whatever works, just wear gloves. And clothes you don't care if you mess up.
Also, you'll need urea, soda ash fixer, the dyes, bottles to mix them in, hand towels for wiping off the gloves (I like to have wet ones and yes, they get covered in dye so make sure it's something you don't care about dyeing - today we dyed all of our household washcloths). I also like to use towels and a sheet under the items I am dyeing, in addition to a tarp over whatever surface I am using. And I always, always dye outside. It IS messy, no matter how neat you think you are.
Um, what else? Oh! Plastic bags to put the dyed stuff in after. I save all of my bread bags and produce bags and every twist tie that has ever graced this house and our previous one. I always wondered why and now I know. These are PERFECT for the job. You can also have spray bottles, syringes and anything else that might make some neat patterns on fabric hanging around in case. And a bucket for the soda ash mix/soak. And a giant plastic spoon to push stuff into it with, because it's HOT. And rubberbands or string (I prefer rubberbands, Hub likes string. We use both.) And right, stuff to dye.
Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, you need to dye can be bought inexpensively at Dharma Trading Company. I LURVE them.
Okay then, on to the actual ateps!
1) First, make sure that everything you intend to dye has first been washed and dried, preferrably in natural detergent and do NOT use fabric softener! It inhibits absorbency.
2) With a dust mask on, mix the fiber-reactive dyes. This involves the measuring of the dyes and a Tbs of urea per 8 oz bottle. Since I am pregnant, Hub did this step whilst I tied some of the items to dye and got them in the soak. For the love of Pete, do NOT use some cheap dye like RIT, because that stuff is worthless for tie-dyeing. Procion fiber-reactive dyes are our favourites, from Dharma Trading Co. And NO, they are NOT paying me to say that for them. I just like them THAT much.
3) This step can go two ways. You can either soak your items in soda ash and THEN do the tieing, OR you can tie the items and THEN soak them in the soad ash fixer. Your choice. We've done the soak first/tie after method, so this time we decided to try the tie first (so much easier)/soak after method. At any rate, the soaking ought to only last about 10 minutes per item, I believe. We always get distracted and leave them in longer.
4) Wring out soaked items! Too much wet can lead to faded and muddied (running together) colours - too dry can lead to the dye not taking properly.
5) You are ready to dye. So go to it! Everyone has their little tricks for dyeing, I suppose. Today one of mine was to use a damp washcloth under whatever I was dyeing to avoid the dye running all over the tarp and mucking up newly-dyed things. Some of the items I dyed even got wrapped in the washcloths we used to dye them over and them placed in the bags together (I found that the washcloths served as a buffer between my gloves (the dye gets all over whatever it touches) and the item, and prevented the accidental mucking of the colours on the dyed piece. Does that makes sense?
Each new item got new washcloths, so never touched the muddied fabric I used as a tablecloth over the tarp. Also, I turned the table a bit each time so I was always dyeing on fresh fabric. HOPEFULLY this prevented a great deal of muddying of colours. We shall know for sure tomorrow. (For the record, we use washcloths instead of paper towels in our home so we have MANY of them lying about. And now they'll all be pretty!)
6) Once the item is saturated in dye (and I mean SATURATED - you REALLY want to make sure it is as saturated as you can make it without having the colours all run together), put it in the plastic bag, careful not to have any of the darker dyes touching the lighter ones (here is where the washcloths really helped in many cases). Put a twist tie on the end and let it sit for at least 3 hours, but preferrably 24.(Believe me, after dyeing all day, you'll want to just wait until tomorrow to rinse it all anyway because that's a day's work all in itself).
Okay, that's all we did today, so I am stopping there. This is pretty much the end of Day 1 in the process. Except for cleanup, which let me tell you, is great fun. Then you REALLY get to see the mess you've managed to make. Gah!
Part Two and the Photos of the finished pieces will be tomorrow. (Our anniversary!!!)
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