Ice Dying

I started seeing ice dying a couple years ago on different blogs and thought "that looked cool". I never got around to trying it till recently when Anna Joyce talked at my quilting guild. She had some lovely pieces that amazed me and when she talked about the simple process, I was hooked. I had to try it as soon as possible.

So I soaked a couple of cotton t-shirts in 1 cup of soda ash and about 2 gallons of warm water for about 20 minutes. I also soaked a small piece of heavy canvas. I like to use extra pieces of fabric to test processes when I'm working with dye. Anna Joyce had also done a really pretty piece of fabric that she sprinkled some dye on the fabric and achieved a kind of confetti effect.

I used two different dyes. One was Dharma Trading fiber reactive dye and the other was Precion Fiber Reactive dye. Both are almost the same but since results can depend on the supplies you use I wanted to use these dyes separately so I could better judge the results.  I scrunched my shirts on wire racks & covered them with ice. I have seen other people use large Tupperware containers and I think that will work better next time as you need a way to hold all the ice on top of the fabric. Mine kept falling off the sides and so there seemed to me a lot of white showing around the edges of my fabric.

I used Dharma Trading Caribbean Blue #132 & Baby Pink #12A on the t-shirt.

I sprinkled about 1/2 teaspoon of each color sort of randomly on top of the ice, some of the dye went directly on the shirt. 

I used Procion Pale Aqua #210 Peach #180 & Aqua Marina #069 on the v neck t-shirt..about 1/4 teaspoon of each color.

The Peach looked a lot more orange than I wanted, and the Pale Aqua looked lot lighter that I expected when I sprinkled the dye on top of the ice. But since dyed items always change color a after the process is complete I waited and hoped that I would get something that I liked.

I used Dharma Trading Baby Pink #12A & Wedgewood Blue #76 as a sprinkle on the fabric
I put a 1/4 teaspoon of each color in a spice jar with lid that would sprinkle the dye sparely. I used less than a 1/8 a teaspoon of each color.

One thing that was interesting that Anna Joyce mentioned was that the dyes will separate in ice and when you sprinkle the powder because of the chemistry. You can see in the photo below that there are some yellow spots that appeared when sprinkled the Baby Pink color.

There was also talk of using different types of ice, grated ice would melt faster meaning that the dye would soak into the material a little sooner than the large pieces of ice. I also read that grated ice would leave a little different design. So I grated some of the ice that I put on for the v-neck shirt & used the Procion dye with the grated ice. But on the day I did my dying it was about 70 degrees and it rained ever so slightly. So the ice did not seem to melt any faster on the day I tried this process. I think a warmer day will produce a little different result but I can not be sure till I test it again.

Pieces after about 10 hours of sitting outside.  On the left are the larger pieces of ice, they are not completely melted.  On the right is the shirt that I used mostly grated ice and you can see all the ice has melted. You can also barely see the pale aqua on the fabric, it's below the orange and right of the aqua marina...where the large white spot is located. I love to test processes and sample patterns but the hardest part of this process was leaving the dye on the shirts for 24 hours. I get impatient waiting and really wanted to see how these shirts would dye. I left the pieces in place overnight and checked them at 10am the next morning.

You can see that the colors did lighten up a little over night so there was hope that the colors would mellow after a wash. I really was not looking forward to a patch of bright orange, I wanted a soft peach color. 

Once washed and dried the shirts came out nice, the peach was more of a peach and not so orange. On a scale of 1-10..I would give these a 7, as I think I learned a couple of things that I should do different next time. I do want to try it with all one color and maybe do a shobori design on the material. 

Leggings and a Book

I decided to show you what I look like wearing the leggings. The burgundy leggings are just a little longer then other leggings but they fit really really nicely. I love putting these on first thing in the morning as I drink coffee and feed the cats. The material is 95% Rayon and 5% spandex. The material has a 4 way stretch, it's about a 60-70% stretch which makes it great for leggings. You can make a size smaller and they will still fit,. It's all about the waistband and the elastic you use. Some elastic is nice and comfortable but your leggings will pull down every time you bend over. A nice strong non-roll elastic will keep the leggings in place. I have come great celtic designs that I'm going to print on the fabric this week to see how it takes.
I received a copy of Sara Midds's latest book "A Bowl of Olives On Food and Memory" from Workman Press. It's a beautifully illustrated book that contains memories of picnics, summer dinners on the balcony, a funny chapter on eggs and a delightful page of napkin designs. Sara Midda's delicate watercolors through out delight the eye. I found myself looking at some of the pages soaking up the elegant images of raspberries, pomegranates & figs. Thought the book is small in size it is filled with such amazing detail,  I took 3 days to pour over and soak in this wonderful little book. I keep going back to the raspberry and the napkin illustrations for inspiration.  

Sewing with Knits

I have crossed a couple of things off my sewing bucket list. I have seen several of the T-shirt quilts on blogs and I finally decided to follow a tutorial and make one. It's fairly simple I used this tutorial &  this tutorial that I saw in the Handmade Holidays series on Sew Mama Sew. I didn't have a lot of batting, so I used part of an old blanket in-between the t-shirt squares. This is a small 36"x36" blanket perfect for a cat bed. It's also amazingly soft. I want to make a larger one now. It's the effect way to use up small pieces of batting and puts old t-shirts to good use. I'm all about recycling whenever I can and I been hoarding t-shirts for a few years just for this type of project. I see a couple more of these t-shirt quilts in my future.
I also made a pair of leggings. I've had the Jalie 2920 pattern for a while but was afraid to try it. Strange that I would be afraid to try to make something. Sometimes I get it in my mind that it will not work and that puts up a barrier and keeps me from every trying. Well I was cleaning up my fabric collection and pulled out some stretchy black fabric that I bought 3 years ago to make yoga pants. The fabric was a little too stretchy and the pants fell right off me. I decided to make the leggings. The pattern is only one piece...it dosn't get any easier then that. I also found some non-rolling elastic to use for the waist. These leggings were so simple I made them in about an hour...that includes re-threading the serger and a couple of mistakes in my stitching. These black leggings fit great. This pattern would also work nicely as a pair of long underwear for my husband in the winter months. A serger makes this project go very fast but if you don't have a serger you can use a regular sewing machine too. I used my Brother sewing machine to put in the waist band, you can see the zig-zag stitch that I used in the waist band above. I love simple and quick projects that I can make is less than an hour, especially if they are things that I was afraid to tackle.