community of dyers

This forum is for all sorts of hand-dyers to post links to pictures of their work and discuss dyeing with other dyers. Please jump right in and post. We'd like to see your work!

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I just made about 30 adult tee-shirts - half in spirals and half smiley faces. when I untie them and rinse them out, they look amazing. when I wash them, most of the black from my spirals washes out and a lot of the navy blue that I used for the eyes and smiles of the smiley faces washed out completely OR partially giving my smiles a "teeth" look to it. I dont get it and its very frustrating because I they look so amazing when I untie them.

I am storing my mixed dyes in a room in my house that doesnt get hot, and is nice and cool and I always add more dye powder and water before making new things...whats going on here???

I have taken two workshops, one with Carter Smith using fiber reactive dyes, and another using acid dye (from Greener Shades, supposedly organic and safer ??) What I found with the fiber reactive was that copious amounts of H20 were used to rinse. The water was running on any particular project for 10-15 minutes full blast. Seems to me a huge waste of resources, to say nothing about contaminating my well and septic system with all that dye. Then with the acid dye in the workshop, the dye seemed to exhaust almost completely, that made me feel better about my w&s, and I wasn't running so much H20 down the drain. At the workshop there were so many people using the same dye baths that each time someone finished, and added vinegar, that dye bath was spoiled. So, we decided to just have a bucket of vinegar and water handy and when a person was finished dyeing, the piece went into the vinegar bucket to set the color. That seemed to work well. The vinegar became muddy looking only after several hours of using it. So, I purchased some washfast and tried the same thing. My dye bath is extremely concentrated (much more so than the workshop dyebaths), and when I put my piece into the vinegar bucket, a lot of dye is released, and upon rinsing in cold H2O, another good quantity of dye is dispatched. Is my dye bath just too concentrated? Is it not correct to set the dye with this method of the vinegar in a separate container? The reason I want to do this is to maintain an ongoing dye bath so I can maintain consistency of reproduceable color.

Hi,
i'm dyeing with an indigo fermentation vat using lye and slaked lime as assistants.i'm constantly checking the ph balance, but i'd like to know what does each one do in the reaction.
in other words since they are both alkali, which one acts as reducing agent and which one is in charge of the alkalinity?
i don't really know which one to add in each situation and i'm really playing by ear in a hit/miss scenario. right now the vat is a browny yellow, but it's not dyeing, i mean it tints the fabric a faint yellow which washes off.
the recipe came from a Japanese page translated with babblefish.

I would like to make a tie dye that looks like this (see link) but I am not sure how to do it. Please help me.

Has anyone tried a clorox bleach pen to remove red dye specks? I haven't had a problem with those specks for a long time but for some reason got just a few this time. Maybe my filter slipped as I was filtering dye or something. They are annoying the heck out of me, though. They are on a light grey to medium grey gradation (cotton/linen blend) and they are all on the light part of the gradation. Not very many..just a few here and there, so it's not like it would be a very daunting task to put a little speck of bleach pen on each one. But I've never used those pens... worth trying it? I wouldn't mind overdying the light grey again to hide any white spots.. I doubt overdying would cover the red specks. I'm not going to strip it at this point because I have no idea what grey strips to and it could be much worse than red specks. Oh, and would I need to neutralize it afterwards?

Paula, forgive me, I couldn't see an appropriate topic. It IS what I'm working on right now, tho...

I've got a bunch of stuff to dye. First off, I wanted to finally get to the shoes I'd bought a few years ago. (for some reason I just keep forgetting about them)

So I mix up my soda ash solution while pre-washing my blanks. I forgot to put the shoes in the wash, but figured no big deal.

When the wash was done, I put the shoes in the soda soak, with a couple larger items on top to weight them down.

After about 30 min or so I think the shoes should be nice and soaked, so I pull the dresses off... and my soda soak is now deep yellow. EEEK! Not only that, but the formerly white shoes are now more cream.

I keep seeing dyed items for sale that are labeled as being made with "low impact" fiber reactive dyes. I guess my question is: is there such an animal? I understand that about 75% of the procion mx FR dyes I use bond to the fabric. The remainder washes out into the storm drain. If a dye like turquoise that contains copper is washed out, copper is being discharged into the storm drain, along with sodium carbonate.

Is it accurate to call fiber reactive dyes "low impact"? Has anyone who dyes done a test on their discharge water to test it for concentration of heavy metals?

Thanks.

I ran into difficulties with my first attempt at soy wax batik, last week. The lines of wax did not penetrate as well as beeswax/paraffin did for me, or else they were too thin and soaked away in the cold water. It's been a while since I last did this, so I'll have to try again with the traditional wax to make sure whether it's the materials or if instead it's just me.

Here's the shirt, another in my fish series, which I dyed as a gift for a friend:

Hello everyone,
I intend on building a box that I will line with an electric blanket. I want predicable results over a given time frame. I am tired of watching the clouds appear just as I get my dyes mixed and my garments prepped.
What I need is information on the length of time it takes for garments to dye-cure at different temperatures which could be maintained by a an electric blanket. I plan to use plastic or perhaps some old refrigerator shelving inside the box, with a small vent at top. If I get really carried away, I could install a thermocouple (?) on the door of the box connected to a probe thermometer set in the centre area of the interior. I can get one off an old barbeque. (maybe, maybe not) This contraption will be outdoors and suitably safeguarded. The desired capacity would be twenty large tees.

I would like to try peace signs (even though they are kind of a tie-dye cliche) and crescent moons (which I saw recently). I'm reading on Paula's site that there are a whole bunch of different ways to get a great peace sign. which way do you use? do any of you use those iron on transfers? I personally feel like thats really cheating and would rather actually tie it myself...

have you ever made a crescent moon before? I would really like to start branching out and trying new stuff...

thanks!

~Elisheva
www.groovesters.com

yes yes, it was a stupid joke - but it made you smile, right?

I have tried LWI in the past and I got HORRIBLE results. I'm thinking of trying it again. most stores here dont really like the bright and amazingly awesome colors that makes tie-dye what it is - so im thinking of trying to tone down some of my items so that these stores will make an order...

I have seen Dyers who will make a shirt that has a heart on it (or any design) and the surrounding color on the shirt will look like LWI or "crinkle" design. as I dont really know how to do either of them, how do you do it? and how do you do it without messing up the design in the center of the item?

I have been seeing and hearing from all different kinds of dyers who say that they will soak their items in soda ash and then let them dry and then some who dont let them dry. what is the difference and what are the benefits of both?

thanks!

~Elisheva
www.groovesters.com

I dyed some vintage slips and bedjackets yesterday using Prosperse disperse dyes from ProChem http://www.prochemicalanddye.com/store/home.php?cat=401

I dyed some acetate slips and some nylon bedjackets with great success. Interestingly I had been trying to dye an acetate slip and not having much luck. Even when I used color remover there were weak areas in the fabric that left rings, smudges, and dark areas. When I over dyed those marks became more pronounced. I took the slip and overdyed it with the disperse dye and the whole garment dyed evenly, even over those dark marks. Go figure. I did notice on another acetate slip there were still a few subtle dark areas but not bad. I am happy these worked!!! Now I will overdye some of the other "mistakes" that happened.

Hi all -- some great photos of people doing traditional tie dye in Mali are here on the BBC website. Enjoy!

hi I am new to this forum and excited about sharing information! I am a dance costume designer and I love to experiment with surface design!! Almost everything I dye stretches in one way or another. Here are some past costumes that I have dyed. The cream and purple dress is hand painted silk. The purple and pink costumes are a combination of low immersion and dip dying, cotton lycra, the blue jumpsuit is a discharge dye with bleach, cotton lycra, the multi colored unitards are painted, cotton lycra, the green are a combination of low immersion and directly sprinkling dye powder onto the fabric,nylon lycra.

I want to thank Paula Birch and all of you for allowing me to visit your online community which I stumbled over when trying to gather information of a type of commercial knitting yarn I'm trying to identify. You all seem to know an awful lot about fibers. Will you help me? This is a 100% cotton yarn used for pique knit shirts. At one time, Lands End, LLBean and Eddie Bauer all used this wonderful yarn in their pique polos. The three of these companies together supply a large percentage of the casual clothing worn in the U.S. One by one, Lands End first, then LLBean and lastly Eddie Bauer flickered out on this yarn and began using fuzzy yarns that interfere with the breathable structure of pique knit.

I have a cotton sari that I hoped to sew into an outfit. It's an electric blue with pale gray embroidery. I washed it on "gentle". On taking it out of the dryer and untangling it -- yes, you guessed it, my hands are now bright blue. It's not dyefast.

I don't want to make a summer outfit out of fabric that will turn me blue, obviously. Do you think it's worth trying Retayne on it? Since I didn't dye it myself, I have no idea what the initial dye process was like, nor can I even be 100% sure it is cotton.

Hi there, I hope someone can help with this problem. I tried dyeing sinamay with acid dye which turned out very badly. I was informed that I should be using Procion dye and so tried that this morning. It was going very well, the colour was just what I wanted until I dried the sinamay. I hung it on the line - just for 10 minutes in the weak Welsh sun - and it changed colour, from a lovely red violet to a much bluer colour. It also went very dull and flat and the colour was very patchy. There are remnants of the original colour where the pegs were which made me wonder if it was the sun but I have been advised that its unlikely. I actually got pretty much the same disasterous result as when I used the acid dye.

i have just completed my bachelor of science in textiles
and im interested to continue my carrier in garments, particularly, the washing and special effects such a on denim

so
any course that any 1 could recommend to regarding garment washing

like doing ms in germent technology?or anything like that