Hubby Hand-Dyed

And here I thought you hand-dyed your hubby. LOL

;) I also thought that, Mary!

There is no desire to HD since I am convinced it would be another addiction for me to fight. But I'll happily give your rejected or non- mottled pieces a home here!

Ginger in CA [yep, I've been watching those smooth-talking posts ;)]

Yee haw!

Some people say that salt makes the colors take better (note: I'm NOT talking about the techniques where you sprinkle salt on a spread out piece of fabric before spritzing dye on the fabric). I never have a problem with the colors taking, so I don't use it. If you aren't having problems, then feel free to skip it.

You get more mottling the tighter you bunch up the fabric, and the less liquid that you use. Experience will teach you how to straddle the fine line between pleasant mottling and lots of white areas. Personally, I like to dye my fabrics twice, using analogous colors (ie colors that are next to each other on the color wheel). I get a lot more interesting fabric, complex colors, and the second dye bath fills in the white patches from the first go around.

Every dyer has a different method for when and how to add the soda ash. Try a bunch of different methods, and see what works for you! Since I never save mixed dye from session to session, I mix up a batch of soda ash into water (going for a pH of about 11), and use that to mix my dyes. It's easy, fast, simple, and most importantly, it works for me.

HTH!

I let my plain fabrics (scoured if necessary) soak in a soda ash solution for about an hour before I am ready to begin dyeing.

When I dye half yard pieces, I use a total of 1 cup of liquid. Also, I dye in quart size ziplock baggies. I only turn the baggies a few times in the dyeing process. My mottling turns out great.

As for the salt, it is supposed to deepen the colors on your fabric. The salt bonds with the water molecules allowing more dye molecules to attach to the fabric.

Hope this helps.

Juli

Go you!

I have used iodized, non-iodized, kosher, sea salt, and pickling salt and seen no difference between them. Glaubers salt does make a difference in brightness with the turquoise and turquoise bearing colors though. I don't imagine that the salt make a huge difference unless you are doing dark colors. I have forgotten the salt once or twice. With light colors it doesn't seem to be a big deal. With dark colours (BLACK!!) it does make a noticable difference as regards color take when doing standard vat dyeing.

I will soak the fabric in the dye solution, stirring frequently for 15 or 20 minutes when dying solids. Then add the soda and stir like the dickens for an hour or so. I usually prefer dark rich colors. But to get the more mottled effect, I squinch it up in a narrow container (quart jars for FQs or half yards, buckets for yardage) when dry, then pour the dye solution over and then let it sit for an hour or more without stirring, then I pour the soda solution in and let it sit overnight. If I had to really cram to get all the fabric in, then I will often call it a multi day project and let it sit in the dye bath overnight, then add the soda and let it sit overnight again.

Those wide shallow plastic totes (under the bed totes and such) are good for limiting the mess when you discover soaking the fabric in the soda solution, and then going at it with squeeter bottles, spray bottles, and/or plant misters full of dye solution.

NightMist

naw he did that to himself. lol. before we were finished with the process he had shed the mask and gloves and had dye all over himself. Ruined one of his t-shirts. But he had fun in the process.

Hugs, Mika

Shameless beggar. ;-)

I'm hoping it doesn't turn into another addiction for us. It can get expensive.

Hugs, Mika

Thank you so much Kathy. You always have such great advice for me on this subject. I'm hoping that next weekend we can give it another shot and see what kind of damage we can do with different colors.

Hugs, Mika

Thank you so much Juli. We were going to try a ziplock bag but only had quart size and we were dyeing yard size pieces. Ok I was overly ambitious. lol. So maybe we'll go to smaller pieces from now on and see how that goes.

Hugs, Mika

Hmmm the turquoise came out just wonderful in brightness without salt. So I think next time we'll try it with salt and see what happens. Haven't gotten ambitious enough to try black just yet.

Ok let me get this straight. I'm confused. Do you add the soda before or after you add the dye? I think how we did it was mixed the urea crystals to the water and stir until they dissolved then added the dye powder to that and poured over the fabric. We let it sit for about 10 minutes then poured off the excess dye and added the soda ash and let that sit for about an hour. So what did we do wrong? The colors came out great, we just didn't have it scrunched up enough to mottle really good.

Hugs, Mika

Now that the weather is warming up, try working outside on a picnic table or card table covered with a cheap plastic tablecloth. Use water from the hose to rinse the fabric. Believe me, this saves a lot on cleanup. Wear your oldest clothes. Use clean 2 liter pop bottles with the tops cut off for containers- save some of the tops for funnels. Once your fabric is rinsed good & dry you can overdye it with more colors. For mottled, jam the fabric tightly scrunched into jars of dye ( use smaller pop bottles). There are some good books out with different techniques, Quilters Newsletter (I think) had an article several years ago about dyeing 1/4 yards in babyfood jars and setting the color somehow in the microwave. This is a very addictive pastime, soon you will be wanting to buy whole bolts of PFD fabric. Remember you can use light color fabric you already own if you don't mind taking a chance with it. WoW fabric is fun, so are white cotton sweatshirts & T-Shirts & even canvas sneakers.

Been there, went crazy & dyed all kinds of things. Synthetics don't work, except rayon. You need different dye for wool & silk (animal fibers) Jane in NE Ohio

Dying solid black is very fussy.

I don't think the salt makes as much difference with the low water methods. With the turquoise I see the biggest difference with the mixes containing turquise when doing standard dying with the full amount of water.

Depends on what I am doing.

When dying in jars and buckets and such, I add the dye solution, then the soda solution, and don't use urea at all.

When I am doing something where I am going to dribble, squirt, spray, or brush the color on, more often than not I will soak the fabric in the soda solution, wring it out and then apply the dye solution. In this case sometimes I will add urea to one solution or the other, sometimes I will mist the fabric with a urea solution after I am done.

You did it just fine for getting a mottled effect. The thing with motteling is you will surely get it if you spent the whole soak time stirring madly because you wanted a solid. If you very carefully don't disturb after pouring on so as to get a really good mottled effect, you will get a beautiful solid. Murphy at work.

Fortunatly nobody will die if you mess up, nor are you very likely to blow anything up. Being as I _know_ the goddess has a notable sense of humor I am _not_ going to say you won't blow anything up! Playing around and seeing what happens if you do this or that is half the fun. Sometimes an experiment gives you something brilliant, sometimes you just make a mess. Making a mess can be quite fun, and I think dying is more fun than mud pies. After spending the last two weeks catching the garden up after the late start because of all the April snow, I have become quite expert at mud pies.

NightMist