Ice Dyeing

On the second Friday of the month my FiberWorks group meets at the Brookfield Craft Center where one of our members demonstrates something of interest. Last Friday Andrea showed how to ice dye.  I had done quite a bit of snow dyeing a couple of winters ago when we had an impressive amount of snow, but this was done with bags of ice from the grocery store. The technique is basically the same, the difference being that with snow dyeing your dye powders are mixed with water and put on the snow as a dye solution.  In ice dyeing you work with the dry powders.

After soaking your fabric in a soda ash solution, you put it in the bottom of a container, crumpled or twisted as you wish, then cover it with a layer of ice.  Then you sprinkle small amounts of Procion dye powders on top of the ice.  The ice acts as a resist and lets the dye hit the fabric at different times  Leave it in the bucket for 24 hours, then rinse, wash in hot water and Synthropol, dry and iron.

We had an absolutely perfect day for the project.  We had a nice room do do our fabric manipulation, then a good outdoor space to deal with the ice and dyes.  Andrea was a great teacher and everyone had a lot of fun.  I did some more on my own when I got home and then some more yesterday.

Some were more successful than others.  Here are some that I liked.

First dyed with just Bright Blue (boring), then over-dyed with Olive and Lemon/Lime

I used just Deep Purple.  All of these colors came through.

Two pieces side by side using Wine, then over-dyed with Olive and Lemon/Lime

This piece and the next were done at the workshop using Kiwi, Pale Yellow and Shrimp (I think).  There were several large and small pieces using these colors.  Parts of it were uninteresting, but I think that these two look like a flower garden.  I am going to make a small piece using these and do some stitching to emphasize the flowers and grass.

Doesn't it look like a water color?

The next three pieces were done with each one using just one black.  Who knew that all these beautiful colors were hiding in there? If I had used them as regular dyes where you mix them with water, I would have made three slightly different shades of black, because there are different concentrations of the mixing colors.  Doing it this way with dry powders, they are quite similar.

Cotton Black

Black 608

Deep Black

Fuschia and Navy

Olive, Azure Blue and I forgot the third color I used.  I should have kept records.  Maybe next time.

Detail of above.