Monday, July 13, 2015

Ice Dye T-Shirts

On Sunday morning a friend came over with her granddaughter for some ice dyeing. They brought an 8 pack of T-shirts. First we soaked them in soda ash, then tucked the shirts into plastic "berry" baskets. The baskets have holes in the bottom, so the ice can melt thru, and we poked a bit of cloth into each hole, to help get an awesome pattern.
After the baskets were filled with ice, we scooped dry dye with a Popsicle stick and sprinkled it over the ice. We kept going back to the turquoise and fuchsia combo, but the 2nd shirt was burgundy and black.

We had saved back 2 shirts, and hung them on a line, after soda ash soak. Using left over liquid dyes we dripped dye on the shirts, as the colors seeped down they blended, and made streaks. We could not find a fabric content on the hats, since they were Dollar Store items, we had dribbled really nice patterns and dropped dots on the brim, but everything blended too well, and not much pattern. Since they did NOT take the dye very well, we did not rinse them. After, batching for a few hours, they came back, and we bagged everything, and popped them in the microwave for 60 seconds, to heat set. They should have batched overnight, but since we were in a hurry, we microwaved. Rinsed well to remove excess dye, then washed and dried them in the washing machine with Synthrapol. She will have some great shirts for back to school. And had a great bonding day with grandma!

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

30,000 Views

I hit 30,000 views today, Thank you to all my friends and followers. I try to keep it interesting, I'm always trying something new when I can find it. Most of June was taken up working on a queen size flannel quilt for my nephew's wedding. So the deadline is being met. I'm working on the binding, then I'll post a pic.
It was the priority, with his sister's baby quilt being second, making textile art was on the back burner. I'm going to a dyeing workshop Thursday, so I'll have some fun things to show you next post. Please check out Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other textile artists are doing. I try to link my posts there every week.