Sunday, March 7, 2010

Inspired to experiment

Two of the bloggers I follow regularly - Cynthia St. Charles and Connie Rose - have recently posted about their dye experiments. Cynthia recently tried snow/ice dyeing, and Connie did some comparisons between dyeing dry and wet fabric, presoaked in soda ash solution and applying the soda ash after the dyes were applied. In both cases, they used a soda ash solution with salt added, which I have not tried yet. So I decided to do some experiments similar to Connie's with salt added to my soda ash... i have previously posted about my ice/snow dyeing experiments.
All of today's pieces were scrunched and placed in small containers first.
Here are my results from today's batch:
The pair above were processed as follows: Left sample I soaked in the soda ash/salt solution for 1 hour, then applied the dyes and batched for 1 hour. Right sample I dyed the fabric dry, let set for 1 hour, then added the soda ash/salt solution and batched for an hour.

The next pair were done as follows: both pieces were presoaked in warm water for 30 minutes; excess water was squeezed out, then scrunched and placed in small containers.
Left sample was soaked in soda ash/salt solution for 1 hour, then the dyes were applied and batched for 1 hour; right sample was dyed, set for 1 hour, then soda ash/salt solution was applied and batched for 1 hour.
In all cases, I used 1 1/2 ounces of dye, and 1 1/2 ounces of soda ash/salt solution.
I have to say that adding salt to the soda ash has created much more interesting, distinct markings than my regular method with just soda ash. Cynthia e-mailed me to tell me she normally used salt to achieve better markings, and I'm sold! And I like seeing the different effects that can be achieved by varying things like starting with wet or dry fabric, pre-soaked or soda soaked after dyeing. Thanks ladies for your inspiration!

5 comments:

Vicki W said...

Great experiments!

Cate Rose said...

Looking good, Judy!

Unknown said...

I'm going to be trying this by putting salt directly into my soda ash bucket. I let my fabrics soak in that for a while before I spin them out in the machine and then dye them (wet)... maybe the salt will add a fun, new dimension to my dyeing! Thanks for the post, Judy. :D

Chris Daly said...

I love your snow dyes Judy. I love using salt in my dye stock too.

Karen S said...

These are really cool. I often add salt after the dye on soda-soaked fabrics. In hot weather, you get all kinds of cool stuff. I'll have to try your techniques next.