Ice Dyeing Again

     A lovely box from Maiwai Ltd in Vancouver arrived two weeks ago with several tins of powdered fabric dyes. I've been dying to try them out (no pun intended).
     I decided to experiment with three types of fabric -- all cottons but several small pieces were pre-washed in a soda ash solution, a couple were bought already prepared to be dyed and the last couple fabric samples were machine washed to remove any sizing. Safety pins were attached to the corners so I would be able to remember which fabric was which.
     The bin is from a local fishing supply store, I wanted something sturdy enough to be used outside even when the weather gets colder. I picked up a couple of dish-drying racks from the Dollar store ... a good fit but since they were light-weight plastic, once I put the ice cubes they started to buckle a bit ... the fasteners I used to help secure them, didn't work in the end. If I see some cheap wire-framed dish racks I'll pick them up.

     Some of the material I scrunched up, some I folded like a fan or in squares, others I twisted in a coil ... tried a variety of things to see what results I liked best. In the end the scrunched, fan-folded and the twisted ones were my favourites. The ones folded in a square & rectangle didn't work so well beyond a couple layers. There is some fine netting over the rack to stop the ice cubes from falling through ... should have confirmed that the clips actually held the netting in place ... some ice cubes chose to fall through the sides and not do their intended work!

A couple bags of ice followed, I put on a face mask and then  added the dye.

     I know if 3 or more colours are placed on the same area it will turn a muddy to dark brown. I tried to keep the colours relatively separate only overlapping a little to get a small mix of colour. When I did the ice dyeing workshop last month, I think the dyes we used were a little more granular than what I had ... or maybe the difference was that my dyes were newer, or maybe it was because it has been so humid out ... my dye powders seemed to clump and it was difficult to get a good spread of colour.
     The following day turned out to be rather rainy .... with the ice melted, I took everything outside & rinsed the fabric and the container with the garden hose .... and decided to let the rain do the final rinse with the fabric pieces hanging on the clothes line.

      I haven't bothered to use a 'salt wash' to secure the colours ... these fabrics will be used in art quilts and I am not planning on them being washed.
     General results: I'm not too crazy about the moss green colour ... it turned rather muddy; I do have two shades of green and may try it again with both greens.  Love the turquoise and will try that again with the 2nd shade of darker blue that came. One of the scrunched pieces in blue will make a great sky piece of fabric.  I like the fuschia colour, it kept its bright colour the best, but I don't use a lot of fuschia in my work.
     The next plan is to dye some fabric without the ice ... that hopefully will give me more intense colour. My daughter saw some dyeing ideas on Pinterest, one using tissue paper overlays on fabric; that might be interesting to experiment with as well. We shall see ...