Adventures in Ice Dying

Hey hey hey,

So a couple weekends ago, I dove headfirst into ice dying and I my kind kind husband helped me document the process. So I figured I should write up a nice blog post to loosely share with you all the process.

I bought all the materials with my hard earned money from dharma trading co, which included the powder dyes and some soda ash, and since I wanted to make the shipping count, I ordered a bunch of fabric too. You do what you gotta do.  So in addition to the dyeing materials I got a couple yards of raw natural colored silk, raw black silk and some bamboo fleece that was on sale. The silks I've had had my eye on for a while.  I can't tell you how many times I had filled up my cart with those silks over the years and then not pulled the trigger. When they arrived they were not not what I was expecting, but somehow they were still surprising too.  They have a lucious drape, but the surface is a bit more rough that I expected.  It reminds me of what I picture like historical peasant shirts to be made out of- which I guess makes sense?  The babmboo fleece I ordered, won't be making an appearance in this post, but for the record when it first arrived I was underwhelmed but once I washed a dried it- oh my gosh- amazing.  Quite possibly one of the softest fluffiest fabrics I have ever purchased.  It was on deep discount and the description said there might be little holes and discolorations throughout, but I didn't see any off the bat, so I'm guessing if there are any, I'll be able to cut around them.  So anyways, that fabric was for sure a win and hopefully will be making an appearance on the blog at a later date.

So getting back to this project. My first step was to have something to dye so of course I sewed something up.  I wanted whatever garment it was on, to be somewhat basic so the dye could really be a focus and if possible I wanted it to be work wear appropriate.  In my head I was going for a a two color profile.  White and black.  I had ordered a couple different color dyes in my order, including, periwinkle, blue grey, navy and raven (which was listed next to all the blacks and I thought was going to be black black).  Eventually I want to make something with a gradient of those colors.

Pattern-wise I settled on the LaBread Tee patten by HalfMoon Atelier.  To me its a perfect basic tee pattern and I was hoping if I stuck to that classy black and white color scheme I would be able to dress it up a little for work.  So that was that.  I was committing to only using the raven color on this first dip into ice dying. 

I also knew design-wise that I wanted there to be a stark contrast between the natural color of the shirt, and the dye itself, so I was only going to dye the shirt on a diagonal and I wanted the pattern to flow organically between all the pattern pieces.  That meant I had to have the portion of the shirt I wanted to dye sewn up and the the portion I didn't want to have dyed not sewn, so the whole thing could lay flat during the process and I could keep those pieces out of the way.  So thats what I did.  I sewed up half a shirt.  I would also like to mention that I hand finished the sleeve cuff, so I could keep the stitches hidden, which was an amazing decision at the time that would prove itself worthwhile, because I mistakenly used polyester thread that I thought was cotton- but it clearly was not because it did not take the dye at all.  Oh yea- the powdered dye I used is only for natural fibers- though I believe if you do a little research you can probably find powdered dye that will work not non-natural fibers as well.

So step one is soak your garment in soda ash (1cup soda ash for 1 gallon of water) for 15 minutes.  This stuff is supper toxic apparently so make sure you wear gloves and don't go sniffing it or anything.  I did this outdoors as well, to keep the fresh air in abundance.  Also I have cats, that will step in anything they are not supposed to if given the opportunity.  So because I knew I only wanted half my shirt dyed, I only soaked half my shirt. Once it's done soaking for 15 minutes, wring that sucker out.  (FYI if you more organized than me you can save the used ash water for a future project- I didn't have any containers on hand to do so) Now you need to set yourself up for the fun part, the actual dying.  I found a piece of unused hardware cloth that my husband had left on the floor of the garage and a big rectangular container he had previously used for mixing cement in (this is actually the same container I used to do my soda ash soak in).  

I placed the hardwear cloth on the container, arranged my shirt filet on top, scrunched it up a bit to add dimension to the final dye job and then covered the areas I wanted to get dyed with ice.  

At that point you just start sprinkling your dye willy nilly- and this is the point where I discovered that my 'raven' dye was actually made up of blue, magenta and yellow- which I guess just about all colors are so maybe that shouldn't have been surprising- but the colors started separating right as they hit moisture. 

Then you wait for the ice to melt.  It was like in the high 90's the day I did this, so it didn't take long to melt at all, but I was super impatient and kept coming out to check on it- so basically I'm that shadow that keeps entering and exiting this time lapse.  Lol, my bad/I'll prob do it again next time.

Once all your ice is melted you can un-scrunch up your work and check out the pattern. At that point I hosed it down to get some of the extra dye off- which also resulted in some really really cool color bleed (in my opinion) and then wrung it out.  I left it out to dry in the sun- on a pile of garbage (we were in the middle of a DIY reno) in my driveway- as one does with their handmade silks (lol) and then contemplated finishing up the sewing as is.  

 

I was a little worried though that since I hadn't thrown it in the washing machine I would risk my ironing surface getting semi permanently dyed, cause you know, sewing is pressing.  So in a moment of unfounded courage I threw it in the wash and dry on delicate- in its half sewn state!  Again- who does that? I dunno, but it turned out fine, there was a little fraying but not bad enough to mess up my efforts to french seam it all around, so all's well that end well! Though- it's not quite the work appropriate shirt I had in my head- I still love it though.

Thanks for reading along.  Hope you liked this one- and maybe even you give ice dyeing a try!

Kten