Dye cubes

Here is another way of using dye cubes. Left over dye concentrate was poured into ice cube containers and placed in the freezer. Two fq's of fabric were soda soaked.

One piece of fabric was placed flat in a container and dye cubes were placed at random on the fabric. There is a piece of cardboard in the container covered with plastic. This gives enough raise so that the fabric will not be in the melting dye.

 This is not my best picture, but you get the idea :-). The second piece of fabric was placed over it.

This was left batching till the next day. After rinsing, washing and ironing the fabric looks like this:

I had not marked which fabric was at the bottom and which at the top. My guess is that the top picture shows the fabric which was on top and that the bottom one was as the bottom. The colors blend a bit more on that one. 

Having seen these results, I make certain that whenever I have some dye concentrate as a left over, that I freeze it. With frozen dye it is difficult to see which color it is. If you want to keep track of that, I suggest that after freezing, you put the dye cubes in small ziplock baggies on which you can write which color is in it.. 

Mandala done with dye cubes

Just as I described in the previous post I folded small quares of fabric (10"x10") in different ways and used binder clips to keep them like that.

I had poured left over dye concentrate from previous dye sessions in ice cube containers and placed these in my freezer. No idea exactly which colors it were, as I did that last year. I use these containers only  for dye and not for making regular ice cubes.

The folded fabric was soaked in soda ash and placed on plastic plates.

On each fabric several dye cubes were placed. I advise to put on gloves when you do this, as it is very messy :-).

The plates were left batching till the next day at room temperature. After rinsing, washing and ironing this is how the fabric turned out:

As you see you have more control of where which color shows up. Of course you can do this with bigger pieces of fabric. Keep in mind that the thicker the folded layers are, the more difficult it will be for the dye to penetrate the centre. I used plastic dinner plates, but if your fabric is bigger you will have to use bigger trays or containers.