Transcript
One really cool technique for tie dying, specially for these cold months is using snow or ice as a resist for your dying.
For that you need kind on not complicated but different set up. So you need a strainer or something with holes that will let the dye pass and you need a bucket from which the strainer will hang and be suspended in such a way that the bottom of the strainer will not touch the bottom of the bucket.
So you’ll start by getting your fabric wet as before and you’ll soak it into your dye activator solution, again for the 5-10 minutes.
Once it’s fully soaked, you want to ring it and place it in the bottom of the strainer. When you place it in the bottom of the strainer, you want to make sure you scrunch it and you put it in the way that you want it to receive the dyes. Because what’s going to happen next is that you’re going to be placing your ice or your snow, if you happen to live in a place that you have fresh snow available, on top of your fabric. And then pour the dyes on top of the snow or ice.
As the snow will melt, the dyes will reach the fabrics in different rates and you’ll create these very, like, cool moldy effect with the different colors. But the creases are pleats that you do when placing your fabric in the strainer will also affect that. So take that in consideration and maybe not put it like squeezed out in the bottom if you don’t want that.
So I’m going to display my fabric nice and neatly making sure that the pleats are somehow all even and now I’m going to pour my ice right on top of it. And you want to make sure that your ice or snow really covers the fabric. This is a slow technique and the snow technique so you want to make sure that you have plenty of ice so it really takes time for the ice to melt before the dyes reach to it.
I chose 3 colors that I’m going to show you in a second. A purple, a black and the pink. Once again, you want make sure that you test out your colors and the ways that they interact together before you test it on your fabric so you’re happy with your results in the end.
After you test the colors, you’re going to start by pouring the dyes directly onto the ice. You could do this with only one dye but I find that it’s pretty cool to do it with many as the fabric in the end will just have many colors all combining together.
So I think this is enough all my ice got in contact with dye and I will just need to wait away until the ice melt to see our results. Our snow or ice dying has been here probably for 20 minutes so it’s about time to remove the ice and see the final result. So I’m just going to scoop the ice out of my strainer. And I’m noticing that most of the ice is clear. That means that all the dye went through it and got to the fabric.
Some ice got stuck to the fabric. And you see the final result and you see how the colors reached different parts of the fabric and kind of like connect and mix together. And if you let it stay for longer, all the white parts would even disappear and become just whiter.
Now you just need to wrap it in plastic bag and also let it cure four to 24 hours. After that, rinse and use as you want it.
And this is how you can do some tie dying using snow or ice as a resist.
