Judi Yakab, who wrote the snow dyeing article for Quilting Arts magazine left a comment that explains how she dyes using snow and still gets beautiful colors:
As for snowdyeing and batching what I do is do it inside where the temp is at least 70 degrees and I let all the snow melt and let it batch overnight so it's a 24 hour process for each batch I do.
Thanks Judi for sharing your process.
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I've been washing my dyed fabric with Retayne after the final hot water & synthropol wash. I'm doing this to make sure it doesn't bleed later on. After I washed and ironed one of the fabrics I decided it needed to be overdyed but I wasn't sure if being treated with retayne would have any effect on future dye baths. I didn't have to worry. As you can see from the before and after pictures below, the once pink fabric is now a nice dark red-violet with a bit of pink that I left show through.
Yesterday I talked about trying to dye in my house when the temp is below 70 degrees.
Sonja asked how does the lady that uses snow, batch her fabric if Hawaii is too cold?
I think the difference is that the fabric that is snow dyed starts out cold but gradually warms up in the house and is left to batch until the temps reach 70 or more for a period of time. My dye room hasn't been reaching even 70 these days so I was trying to find a way to keep the dye bath warmer than the room temperature. It worked Ok but I think if I can find a way to keep the temperature consistently around 80 degrees I would get better results. Using a hot soak to start with is OK, but it cools off too quickly to stay above 80 degrees for as long as I would like. I need to do some more experimenting.
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2 comments:
Kathy my understanding about using retayne is that once you use it you always have to use it when you wash otherwise it just washes out. As for snowdyeing and batching what I do is do it inside where the temp is at least 70 degrees and I let all the snow melt and let it batch overnight so it's a 24 hour process for each batch I do.
Judi,
The directions for Retayne say to use it in hot water the first time you wash the fabric and after that, use only cold water. So to me that indicated that retayne (or it's effect on fabric) will still be working to prevent bleeding if I do subquent washings in cold or warm water. I did try an experiment where I used my own hand dyed fabric, but didn't rinse it out very well so it was still bleeding. I then washed it in retayne and dried it. No bleeding. So I don't know if this is just a coincidence
Kathy
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