More Parfait Style Ice Dyeing

I admit it!  I'm addicted to ice dyeing.  It's easy, fun and you get such amazing, serendipitous results.  Here are some that I did during my spring break. The parfait dyeing is great because stacking one fabric on top of another, scrunching them up, the fabric gets some dye from the piece below and of course the dyes that are sprinkled directly on top of it, plus some that will sift down from ones that will be stacked on top.  I don't always remember where each fabric was stacked, even though I am trying to take better notes while dyeing.

The one below received some Peacock Blue, Pomegranate and Robin's Egg.  These names refer to procion dyes obtainable from Dharma Trading Company, http://www.dharmatrading.com, where I get most of my fabrics and dyes.

The fabric below was a new one for me.  It is called Radiance and one side of the fabric is silk and the other cotton.  It really took the dye well, as you can see.  Below is the silk side, which as beautiful shimmer to it. Couldn't resist checking it out.

Below is the cotton side in which the colors are more intense.

If you like these fabrics and want to get together a group of people and have an ice dyeing party at your house and you live in the Paso Robles area, contact me and we can set something up.  It takes about three hours, including set up and clean up to create a couple gallon jugs of fabrics.  I use fat quarters and sometimes half yards.  I've also done t-shirts and scarves.

Ice Dyeing Revisited

I'm sure loving the results I'm getting from doing ice dyeing, both parfait style and elevated on racks.  This time I tried to document the colors and techniques I was using as I was working, but it's pretty hard to do because of wearing rubber gloves, a mask, dripping water, etc.  I find it also interrupts the flow of the creative process, or at least mine.  Documenting is definitely a right brain activity, whereas intuitive creating is left brain.  Even after documenting, by the time they are rinsed, washed twice and dried, where you can really see the colors and designs, there's no way I can remember what position each fabric was in the parfait container. Next time, I may try writing a little number in the corner of each fabric prior to soaking in the soda ash and see if I can better figure out what colors were used in each.  And then again, I might just say the heck with it and enjoy the total serendipity of the moment because chances are, I wouldn't be able to create the same exact fabric again anyways.   So here there are.

And...these will all be for sale at Monday night's Almond Country Quilt Guild meeting http://www.almondcountryquilters.org/ , if you are interested in buying.

All of the above fabrics are fat quarters.  The fabric below is a 1/2 length.

Above is a closeup of the fabric.  The entire piece is below. 

I did some tying and clamping on this one.

Here are a couple Large size T-Shirts

Designing a Quilt with Parfait Dyed Fabrics

Today, I was working with some fabrics I made a couple of years ago by using the parfait dyeing method.  I folded, scrunched and squished three- half yard pieces of fabric into a gallon size pitcher.  In between each fabric, I poured some highly concentrated liquid procion dyes and topped it all off with some soda ash.  The process is similar to what is described in Ann Johnston's great book, Color by Accident, which has some great recipes for creating beautiful low-water immersion dyed fabrics.   These fabrics though, have more folds due to how tightly they fit into the pitcher, which in turn creates some wonderful  stained-glass like designs, at least that's what I got in this batch.  Here's a couple photos of the fabrics and closeups.

Below is my sketch idea for using these fabrics.  I like taking photos of my fabrics and playing around with cutting them up, rather than cutting up the fabric. 

Ice Dyeing

Have you tried this fun, colorful, serendipitous method of creating fabric yet?  If not, go for it.  It's easy!  About a month ago, one of my Cutting Edge group friends, Rene,  showed some of us how to do it.  She's a great teacher and we all made some wonderful fabrics.  I had a chance to create another batch of them and here they are, along with a couple pictures of them in process.

 This is a gallon pitcher of parfait ice dye  pieces.  There are about 5 fat quarters in it.

 These fabrics were twisted and/or tied and put on racks.  Below are some of my results.