Sunday, February 2, 2014

Snow dyed fabric


It snowed this week so I got to try the snow dyed fabric technique I've been reading about. My friend and fabric artist, Pat Cafferty from Canada, has done some beautiful snow dyed fabric and has encouraged and inspired me to try this. I have much to learn yet, but the completed dyed fabric is interesting and should lend itself to being the background to some of my Spirit paintings. Here is the documentation of the steps I took to dye the fabric with snow. 




Soda Ash soak for 10 min. to help the fabric accept and hold the dye.  Make sure you wear protective goggles and mask.

The large pans I used held cookie cooling racks in the bottom.  These helped keep the cloth off of the bottom of the pan so it didn't sit in a pool of dye after the snow melted.

These two smaller pans are about shoe box size.  The cloth was placed in the bottom of the pans with no rack to hold the fabric up.

This is the cloth scrunched in the large pan lying on top of the cookie rack.

This photo shows the cloth in the small pan, with the cloth sitting on the bottom of the pan.

This is the first large pan with the snow filled to the top.  Approximately 1/2 teaspoon of powdered RIT fabric dye was randomly sprinkled over the top of the snow.  I used Royal blue, red and fuchsia dye.

This is the completed, dried and ironed full piece of course muslin fabric that I used in this first pan.   

Detail of the muslin fabric.

Second detail of the muslin fabric.

Third detail of the muslin fabric.

Fourth detail of the muslin fabric.

This is the second large pan with the snow filled to the top of the pan.  The colors used here were orange, fuchsia, and red.  The very dark areas are the red powdered dye.  I used approximately 1/2 teaspoon of each color.

This is 100% fine cotton fabric that measures approximately 36"x45".  It is completed, dried and ironed.  The texture in the dye patterns is much more subtle than the courser fabrics.

Detail of fine cotton fabric.

Detail 2 of fine cotton fabric.

Detail 3 of fine cotton fabric (this photo came out a little brighter than the actual fabric.  This piece is actually very soft colors rather than so intense.).

Detail 4 of fine cotton fabric.

Snow filled small pan with orange and fuchsia dye on top, approximately 1/2 teaspoon of each.

Full completed, dried and ironed canvas approximately 18"x36".  This piece is more vibrant than the colors appear in the photos.  The canvas seemed to accept the textured patterns better than the finer fabrics.

Detail 1 of canvas.

Detail 2 of canvas.

Detail 3 of canvas.

This is the second small pan filled with snow and approximately 1/2 teaspoon of fuchsia and royal blue dye with the second piece of canvas fabric in the bottom.

This is the full 18"x36" piece of canvas, dried and ironed.  It is my favorite piece.  It had more white in it than I thought it would, since it sat on the bottom of the small pan with no rack to keep it up out of the melted liquid dye.  I love the patterns and textures in this one, as well as the colors.  I felt this was the most successful piece.  I may just stretch and frame this piece without painting anything on top of it.  

Detail of blue canvas.

Detail 2 of blue canvas.

Detail 3 of blue canvas.

Please watch for further posts of these pieces as I use them for a base for my Spirit paintings.  I hope you enjoyed this post.  Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me on Facebook.











2 comments:

  1. You have some interesting results. I like the 'blue' one especially and it had some nice texturing in it. I have never been happy with the results on muslin but they all have a use and I have used some muslin pieces as grounds...not recently though. Didn't dye any muslin today. Perhaps will give that a go tomorrow.

    I will rinse and wash my pieces tomorrow and see what I get. I am concerned that they won't be spectacular as the snow melted quite quickly. I put the boxes in the basement but think it might have been a good idea to put them back outside for a few hours....it was milder today and the snow would have melted more slowly than it did in the basement. Tomorrow will be 'tell tale day'.

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    1. I know that my snow was still in the pan after 5 hours, but it was melted by morning (I added the snow at 5pm). I waited until about 10am to rinse them since the snow was gone. I wondered about keeping the pans outdoors for awhile. It will probably be Tuesday before I try again, and I need to get more fabric and it will probably be the canvas. Really probably have more fabric than I'm going to use now, but still want to see if I can get a different effect. Can't wait to see your results. Good luck!

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