JBN Creations: Snow Dyeing

Here in Detroit we have now had the snowiest January on record. When we got the monster snow I decided to dye some t-shirts on racks with yardage underneath to catch the runoff. Here is the setup before I added the dye. The racks are from the kitchen organizing section at Meijer and they were sitting on shallow food trays.

Here are the shirts after the dye was added. The yardage is underneath and is a variety of white cottons that I had on hand. Some of them were white on white that I had purchased some years ago. In fact I didn't look too closely at the fabric before I put it in the soda ash and didn't realize what they were until after i rinsed them. Not sure how I will use them, but they are interesting.

You can see that I am partial to blue, although as a nod to one of my friends I used orange on a few.

Here are the ones I did today. T shirts on top and various white yardage underneath. In the upper photo you can see I changed to deeper aluminum roasting pans.

I learned not to use shallow pans to collect the melted snow with the dye, there will be more dye water than the pans can handle. I had to use paper towels to collect the water as the snow melted. Emptying the trays was a challenge. My studio is comprised of three connecting rooms, none of which is very large. The dyeing room is next to the bath and hence it is necessary to carry the trays into the bathroom to empty them. I managed without spilling any, but realized that I would have to make some equipment changes before I dyed anymore items using snow.

I also learned to use less dye this time. I will have to wait and see how this works when the snow has melted and the items washed.

The items in the following photos are from the first round of snow dyeing.

Some of the fabric I dyed was pinatex, and here are shorts of two different areas of one piece.

I had some white on white fabrics from some time ago when I was making more traditional quilts and decided to see what would happen if I dyed some of it.