snow day

We were scheduled to meet yesterday at Jo's house for a fabrigo day but a little bit of a snow storm stopped us in our tracks. We cancelled and rescheduled for next week. So what do you think about when you have a snow day--Why snow dying fabric of course. We have had a milder than  usual winter this year-its really our first snowfall and we are mid January-all the way closer to spring my sweetie!


So today I have decided that I will do some snow dying. I have done quite a bit of other kinds of dying but never the snow kind.


Right now my fabric is soaking in soda ash water--getting prepped to soak up all that amazing colour from the procion dyes that I will use.

 I have a few pieces of muslin that I will dye.  I have one piece of bleached muslin, one unbleached and one that I dyed that last summer that I think needs some more work. It has big splotches of orange on a white ground. I think it needs more blended colour. I am considering red overdying. And I have a piece of unknown fabric - probably a synthetic that has a nice shimmering look. I have used this fabric in other dye projects so I know that it will take the dye.




Now to prepare the containers. I am going to use three different containers; one is the tub that the fabrics are soaking in now, one is another plastic container from the basement and one is a coffee can that was emptied this morning. The fabric should be elevated from the bottom of the dye pot so that it is not sitting in the dye for a long time. (at least that is what I read.) so in order to elevate the fabric I have a few jars and pop cans that I have placed in the bottom of my containers.

I am hoping that these cans will provide enough elevation to keep the fabric  out of direct dyes.  I think that the action of the snow melting slowly is what gives this method such an interesting result. That's a shot of the pop cans inside of the coffee can. Good shot!!  I like the effect of the background. The can has a silver lining.  think I will use that idea again in some of my photography. My camera was just on an auto setting.


So, my fabric has been in the presoak long enough.
Since I have three containers, I have decided to cut each of the fabrics into three sections. Then I can dye each container different colour but have each fabric dyed with each colour.


I crumple each fabric and place it in the containers, take the containers outside, cover each batch with snow, pour dyes over each pile of snow and wait for the magic to happen.
I will continue this post tomorrow.