Friday, February 27, 2009

D is for Dharma Fiber Reactive Cold Batch Dyed Dress


My friend bought a metallic thread pintucked viscose dress on a whim because the fit was flattering on her. Unfortunately, the color was an awful light taupe that would make anyone look like a corpse. It hung unworn in her closet.

I told her I would experiment on it if she would agree that it was OK if it was ruined. I wanted to try a cold batch dye process because it was such a small project that I did not want to waste dye and I wanted to avoid using the 6 cups of salt and tedium that would have been required in a washing machine method.

After machine prewashing in Synthrapol I soda soaked the damp dress for 20 minutes then threw it in my washing machine on spin cycle to remove the excess water. Then I mixed a Tbsp of Truffle Brown Dharma Fiber Reactive dye in 3/4 gallon of urea water. The dye had been pasted and dissolved using ¼ cup of water and 2 Tbsp of casoline oil. I did not bother to strain the dye. I put the dress in a kitty litter pan and poured the dye over it, turning the dress occasionally. The final lazy girl step was squishing the dye through the fabric by hand. I hand pressed out the excess water, left the dress in the pan, put the pan in a garbage bag, and left it to batch in my indoor laundry sink overnight. The next day I did one quick hand rinse and then put the dress in the gentle cycle wash with Synthrapol, followed by a cold water soaking in Milsoft in the machine, then a final cold rinse.

The result surprised me. There must be 200 long pintucks on this dress. There is not a fleck of undissolved dye or a single streak. The dress is color fast and the fabric is nice and soft.

The nagging question now is if I could get such good results if the outcome was important….

Sunday, February 15, 2009

F is for Finger pleated Shibori


I decided to try to finger pleat a 40" x 60" piece of soda soaked cotton lycra. This fabric is heavy, and dyes differently than a plain cotton fabric because the surface is a bit like flannel because of the loose cotton thread and the lycra content.


My theory was that the weight of the fabric would enable me to finger pleat this large piece of fabric and that I could loosely secure the pleated bundle with rubber bands spaced 5 or 6 inches apart. That theory proved to be correct to the great joy of my non-functioning fingers.


2 colors (navy and purple) were used with the intent of having a lot of white areas. I decided during dyeing to use a highly dilute navy also. The dye was applied with squirt bottles.


I kind of like it even though it got a little muddy with the purple in areas. Let's hope I can make something out of this that doesn't look too ridiculous.

C is for Color Hue resisted with Galactic Glitter Glue


I receive Dyeing 101 emails and have been intrigued with using Elmer's Galactic Glue as a resist. The Dyeing 101 info showed using the glue as a total resist on soda soaked cotton that was dyedw/ procion dyes after the glue dried. I tried something different. I dyed a silk habotai scarf a yellowish green with ColorHue. That took 2 minutes. I ironed the scarf dry and attached it to a vinyl coveredprint board. Next, I squirted the glue in 6 or 8 inch lengths and spread it on the silk with a foam brush. I tried to cover the fabric completely, but I knew the glue was slightly thicker in some areas. It took about 4 hours for the glue to dry. Once it was dryI removed it from the board and scrunched the fabric in my hands. Then I pinned it on a clean vinyl covered print board and painted the entire glued surface with alginate thickened black acid dye.


When the dye solution was dry I steam set the scarf. Rinsing out all the glue was achieved by simmering the scarf in Synthrapol and water on the stove for about 20 minutes. I am anxious to find out if it was the alginate thickened dye that allowed the black to penetrate the glue in a way that created shading, or if itwas a result of the steaming. Maybe it was a combination of the two. More to learn!
 
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