Thursday, October 10, 2013

Ice Dyeing Scarves

I've been doing some ice dyeing in preparation for the Southern Highland Craft Fair coming up next week. I found a good system for laying the scarves on top of the trays. I bought some vinyl shelving at a home improvement store - 24" wide and 6' long.  I was worried about the lip on the front side of the shelf - maybe preventing it from lying flat. But the trays were 22" wide and the shelving cleared it. Perfect, off to a good start.
I used 2 large new cats pans underneath lengthwise ..
and the shelving on top giving me a long continuous working area although I did keep the scarves separated because of color.
I've been using a lot of bamboo rayon and love the results.  A while back I ordered one of each kind of rayon scarf (they had bamboo, regular, shawls etc.) plus a yard of rayon to see how they would work with this technique. I've used rayon before with the procion mx dyes and they do very well so I thought - why not.
I didn't use the crushed ice this time around as I didn't have an ice crusher. These two batches were done side by side with about 8" to separate them.
The gold, mustard and brown were first, left uncovered while I worked on the second set of navy, electric blue and royal blue. Some of the sneaky little blue dye particles wandered over into my gold scarves.
What a surprise when I uncovered them the next morning to find this. You can see - this scarf was closest to the blue batch and reaped the benefits of migration.  I really liked the effect and am wanting to try this again.
I really like using ice - it creates such a crystalline effect.
I wrote down the colors I used - something I usually don't do as it really doesn't matter but in this case, making scarves to sell - thought I should have a record. I used 3 different blues on this batch and was so surprised to see the amount of purple. I had to go back and check to make sure I really used all blues.
There was a lot of color splitting with this group of dyes, but I love the surprises - sometimes good and sometimes not so good... this time it was good.
I dyed 3 scarves in each color way and depending where the dye was sprinkled, really changed the look of the scarf.  This one was a lot lighter.


8 comments:

  1. Love the scarves, have not tried to ice dye scarves yet but I will after seeing your results.

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  2. Fantastic!! And I will have to look into those shelves rather than the cookie racks I have been using!!

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  3. Love the scarves Judy. I also like your new web site just checked it out recently.

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  4. brilliant colorwork! LeeAnna Paylor leeannaquilts@gmail.com

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  5. Since I was lucky enough to see your results in person...I can report they are even more beautiful than the photos posted. There's no reason to crush the ice....can't argue with perfection!

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  6. Beautiful! I love the serendipity of ice dyeing along with the movement.

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  7. Thanks everyone...The process is so much fun and you really do get lots of surprises! Judy

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  8. The scarves are lovely and I agree with you, the process is very fun!

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