Ice Dyeing

Many of you may have tried this technique, with varying results. Below are pictures of a few of my early experiments:

This was part of a parfait ice dye experiment, and I used lots of different colors and probably way more dye powder than I needed.  I love the markings, but never did figure out what to do with it.

Another example of ice dyeing, not my favorite effort, but it’s good to compare with what I have been able to achieve since I took a fabulous on-line class offered by Lynda Heines, one of our alumni from a few years back. I took Lynda’s class, available at lyndaheines.com, last year, and learned so much from her to help me get some wonderful, consistent results!  Here are some of the pieces I dyed using her instructions:

                 

The above are fabrics, and below are some garments I have dyed all using her techniques.

 

I won’t go into process here, since there are plenty of basic resources online for basic ice dyeing, but I will tell you if you are serious about learning this dyeing technique, Lynda’s class is very informative and affordable. Lynda provides great downloadable tutorials and tools to help, and she has created a closed Facebook for students where we can share our results and learn more from her and each other.  Now that warmer weather is coming, it’s a great time to give this great technique a try!

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.

Mandala

You can call this mandala dyeing or clamped shibori. I used small pieces of fabric 10"x10", but of course you can do this with bigger pieces as well. I folded the squares in different ways and used binder clips to keep them in these shapes:

Soaked them in soda ash and placed them on a raised platform in a bucket.

Put ice cubes on them and sprinkled dye powders. I used Plum, Deep Purple and Amethyst (all G&K)
and let them batch till the next day.

If you remain in the same area, it is best to cover the dyepowder with some more ice or put a lid on the container. You do not want to inhale the powder.

Next day the fabric was rinsed, washed and ironed and this is how they turned out:

I did not mark which fabric I folded in which way as I do not mind a surprise. In next blogpost I will show you how you can do this with dye cubes.

My Try at Ice Dyeing

I finally had a chance to try some ice dyeing.

Here is my set up--I used two small containers (I only show one in the picture.) in which to scrunch fabric and one big container covered with a grid. I placed two fabrics in the big container under the grid and placed the remaining fabrics on top of the grid. Then, I covered the fabrics with ice I purchased at the store and sprinkled the ice with powdered dyes. Here's the setup...

Here are two of the fabrics before dyeing. The piece on the left is a "wipe-up" rag. The fabric on the right is an OLD calico fabric that I really hated. I thought any kind of dyeing could only help this poor "dog."

Here is what they looked like after ice dyeing. The fabric on the right was one of the fabrics placed under the grid for dyeing.

These are some commercial fabrics I wanted to experiment with.

After dyeing...

This is a flour-paste resist piece before dyeing.

This is after dyeing. This fabric was in one of the small round containers. I used fire engine red, rust orange, and bronze dyes.

Another piece of flour-paste resist before...

And after... This fabric was in one of the small round containers. I used rust, bronze, pumpkin spice, and golden yellow dyes.

This is the only "plain" piece I dyed. It was one of the fabrics under the grid.

I like the results, but I didn't get that "crystal" effect I like so much. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. I wanted to see what difference it would make to use dry fabric to start with, so I used fabric I had preciously soda soaked and dried. The other reason might be that the ice I used was not really small. There were big chunks of ice rather than small cubes. (I think I read somewhere that that might make a difference.)

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