dye painting and I are not friends

Quick update: I tried my hand at dye painting. Things went pretty well... until I rinsed out.

First of all, the patterns I painted got quite blurry as I rinsed. I rinsed in very cold water, quite a bit, before washing in Synthropol. But everything got smeared. I was pretty bummed out.

Second of all, I used washable Crayola markers to give me design guidelines. (As recommended in Tie Dye 101, the DVD.) And they didn't wash out! Gack!

I'm sure part of my problem was that the thing I was dyeing was a hat. I couldn't put it in the washing machine and could just barely immerse it in my laundry sink. But I really don't know how I could have kept the pattern from blurring in the rinse/wash.

The other two hats I had I have simply painted with the activated, thickened dye paste and tossed a little salt on, leaving them to cure a day. They won't be as clever as my painted hat was meant to be, but they will be less of a headache. I tried not to get dye on the inner headband of the hat... hope they don't bleed dye on somebody's hot, sweaty head!

direct dye application

It's interesting that most people seem to want to call any direct dye application that's not painting "tie dye." I've often run into people where I'm showing my veils, and they say, "Oh, you tie dyed these?" Well, no. Mostly they aren't tie dyed. I can say that with some confidence because they were not tied. Then I try to give the 15-second explanation of low-water immersion dyeing, which leaves them baffled.

On the other hand, the arashi shibori veils were tied. So technically I suppose you could call them "tie dye" -- but nobody looks at those and calls them that. Maybe because they don't look anything at all like classic 60s tie dye? But the LWI silks mostly don't look "tie dyed" to me either... no spirals or mandalas... sometimes I accordion-fold a bit, but I consciously try to reduce white areas, which are more typical of tie dye.

I'm actually about to try a totally different dye method: direct application of thickened fiber reactive dyes. Aka "painting". I mixed up some thickened chemical water this morning in preparation... and forgot once again to add the sodium alginate slowly. I hope it's not going to be a real mess when I try to use it.

Every time I look at a dye technique and say, "Well, I'll probably never do that," I almost always end up trying it!

Gah! More poly thread!

I cannot believe it. The most recent batch of scarves and the silk satin bags I bought from Dharma Trading all seem to have been sewn with polyester thread!

The little shoulder bags only look bad around the decorative frogs. I'll have to resew the frogs in a matching color of thread, but coming up with the right color might be a bit tough. The scarves look fairly awful, with a white "dotted line" running around their hems. I might have to resew those too. Arg! I'd order from Thai Silks, but it seems like all of their devore scarves are always backordered.

When I reported this problem to Dharma before, their response, essentially, was "that happens sometimes." Bleah.

Supplies not from Dharma Trading

Despite the fact that Dharma Trading seems to get all my money, there are some things I've bought for dye work that didn't come from them. For example I got some great glass beakers, stir rods, and nitrile gloves from American Science Surplus. (AmSci is possibly the coolest store on earth, so if you are in the neighborhood, you gotta check it out sometime. My Uncle Jay took me there when I was a kid and I've always loved it.) I got a good deal on a digital scale from them, too, though I wish it weighed to the half-gram sometimes, not the gram.

One day I was tooling around the Nalgene Outdoor online store and saw something I'd been looking for a while: a very small drop-dispensing bottle for my Synthropol. (I'm always accidentally pouring in more Synthropol than I need, and it's such a strong detergent that you then have to spend a half hour rinsing your fabric.) They have very interesting things on that Nalgene site.

The grocery store has also been nice to me for a dedicated pair of dyeing tongs and Gladware containers to dye in. The hardware store provided a canning rack and a great pot, not to mention plastic dropcloths and some buckets. (Come to think of it, I need some more foam paint brushes.) Office supply gave me washable markers and rubber bands. The dollar store was great for some inexpensive plastic containers... but I found out, to my horror, that my dollar-store measuring spoons were noticeably different than my initial set! That certainly explained some of those inconsistent results.

Oddly enough, I've bought very little from the local fabric and crafts stores! I think I picked up some more soda ash when I was running low, but that's about it. Although... I did succumb to the lure of the 100% cotton $2.99 white Tshirts.

raspberry crepe scarf

raspberry crepe scarf
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I was going to do some shibori on this to overdye it, but it's so pretty as it is I've changed my mind. It has a very pretty marbled look.

raspberry dotted burnout scarf

raspberry dotted burnout scarf
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

These satin burnout scarves certainly dye up prettily. If only the opposite side were as attractive, I'd buy burnout by the yard and make veils from it.

raspberry ice

raspberry ice
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Sadly, a blurry photo. Guess I have to start dragging the tripod out every time! Very fun veil... much mooshing around of raspberry and a pale orchid dye. "Mooshing"... that's a technical dye term, right?

successful sales weekend!

Just a few days before I was to head down to the Mahmoud Reda dance workshop in Iowa, I got an email from Fritha, a lovely dancer from that area. Fritha's mom Darlene Coltrain is my "dye mentor." (Darlene is an incredible artist who paints and makes gorgeous jewelry on top of her fabulous skills in silk painting, so I feel very honored that she should take an interest in my hobby. She's definitely "fine arts;" I'm simply "hand crafts.") Fritha wanted to know whether I'd be brining veils to Cedar Rapids, and when I said I was coming to dance, not sell, she suggested that Kahraman Dance (the hosting organization) could sell for me on consignment.

This was good news and bad news... good news because I might make a sale or two, but bad news because my stock was low! So I spent every evening between then and the show madly dyeing. I ended up taking thirteen veils along.

The Kahraman folks were very kind to me, particularly Carol Wick, who was obviously a massive organizing force behind the event. We determined their percentage and they found me space to set out the veils and my business cards.

By the end of the weekend I'd sold four veils! And I sold another on the way home to a Madison dancer who saw a veil fresh from Wednesday night and just HAD to have it. A particular satisfaction to me was that I sold my four yard veil. Sadly, I never took a picture of it (d'oh!), but it was a very deep gold color, tied arashi shibori style and overdyed with a dye that was named chocolate brown but turned into a deep coppery red color. I had been trying to talk Fritha into it (she's at least six feet tall), and then worked on Sonya a bit (she's a petite little thing, but she has total control of a four yard veil). They were both thinking about it... then it was gone... bought from under their noses by Carol Wick! That was pretty cool.

So! More money for the going-to-Cairo fund! Of course now I have to dye a whole lot more veils, since I'm giving a student discount to the Bellydancing UW club for the fall semester... back to the dye notebook....