community of dyers

After my experience with the wet soda ash dipped shirt where the color really sank through the material I am wondering if I want solid colors and less white showing should I then use a wetter fabric for the dying?? Am I correct in this thinking? I really do have difficulty in controlling the amount of dye coming out of the bottle for the center of and along the pie shapes for a swirl. I think I would prefer smaller holes in the yorker cap. I did buy some that had no hole when I made fishing rods and I might need to look for some. BTW I finally got a Dharma catalog which is a lot easier than online browsing.

It seem just about when I think I have it figured out well you know another question comes up. I tied up a couple of swirls on prewashed xl t's. Then I did the soda ash soak but I really feel like too much liquid was left on the shirts. I did let the excess drip off (old oven rack over a big plastic rectangular bucket) for a while but I guess it comes down to tying with a well wrung out shirt and gloves. The squeezing out after tying seems much too wet which is what I sort of expected. I really am not too crazy about tying a wet soda ash fabric. I guess as yu mentioned in my earlier question I could line dry for a while just to take out the excess and then tie damp. I guess I will have to see how the dripping works out. I did leave the first one drip off for a while covered with saran wrap in the shade before I bag it. These two shirts are only 1 or two color swirls so I will see. Just seems like a big waste of soda ash water.

I have been LWI dyeing fabric and I was wondering what the pros and cons are to presoaking the fabric in a Soda Ash solution, like I do with tie dye as opposed to adding a soda ash solution over the top are. This last piece I did (while having a massive case of 4 year old jumping up and down screaming "mommy!" over and over again) I was on auto-pilot and prepped like I was tie dyeing rather than LWI. It is outside processing right now and Im wondering if it will come out at all!

Hello All, I'm new to this group and have enjoyed finding this forum as well as reading all the postings/hints/instructions. Very diverse and interesting group!

I have a question I hope that someone will know the answer to:

When I was a child in Camp Fire Girls, about the early 60s, our leader took nylon stockings and boiled them in a pot on the stove in an unknown liquid to me. As the stockings boiled, they would change colors depending on how long she would leave the stocking in the pot. They would turn various pastel colors. Different stockings would turn different colors.

We would then take a very thin wire and make a loop, twist the loop closed and then stretch the 'dyed' nylon over it and again, twist the wire to secure the whole thing. Four of these loops connected together would make a butterfly.

Does anyone know if aluminum acetate powder can go bad? I've been using some very old powder I had stored in a sealed opaque container but it is turning things very yellow. ?? I am going to experiment today and see if it's something in my well water by using some bottled water but I wonder about the alum. If you have any information I'd appreciate it.

In the Jacquard procion mixing table when a color is listed as 1 part A and one part B each with 2 1/4 tsp then is the amount of water to be added 8 oz or double 16 oz? I am also confused about the the bubble gum pink which is one part of 2 1/4 tsp of fuchsia which I would guess is plain fuchsia. It would seem it should be a diluted amount.

I have black 300 new black. If I wanted to make a lite sort of sweatshirt gray what might be a good starting point or rough dilution for a 8 tsp /8 ounce mix.

I am also a little confused about a pastel say 1/8 strength of the color like magenta and how it dyes the fabric.

From what I know the soda ash fixer can be used in 3 ways.

1 the tie dye article can be soaked in the soda ash solution prior to dying either before or after tie step. It seems to me that this would result in faster fixing of the dye and less mixing of colors. Also the problem with needing gloves to tie the article.

2 the soda ash soak can be done after the article is dyed. It seems that this method would allow the colors to blend better before fixing. Can the soda ash water be used again if it is colored from the dye? One would need a separate bucket with soda ash water for each article-right?

I have been asked to take this maribou feather vest to a dark black and I am not sure how to go about this project. I recently read that the feathers when wet will bunch up and loose their looseness. I also read that if I shake out the vest periodically during the dyeing proccess, then the feather will retain the looseness. Has anyone dyed this type of feathers and is there any advice on how to go about this? Should I use a normal acid dyeing water immersion process? Is it okay to use hot water? Is it okay to add distilled vinegar? Should I use acid crystals? Any info is greatly appreciated! Here is the link of the vest that I will be working on:

From the which colors are pure table and the how can i mix colors, I cannot figure out which Dharma Procion dye this is in the latest listing

http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/3796-AA.shtml?lnav=dyes.html

warm black mxcwna

fire engine red mx=bra

I have two printers the one gives better results in term of a picture probably because it has been used less. The printhead on the the one leaves streaks so it is a non starter. Auto cleaning printhead I don't think so. Anyway I tried a print on an old hankie just to get my feet wet. I gave it a wash today and the transfer did soften up and seems OK. Grey dog on a white background not bad. I am trying to keep the picture as close to the size so that the image is more dense. I have an old version of photoshop I got with a camera but I am trying to use the inherent paint program in windows 7.

I grew up in the 80's so I'm loving the flourescent/neon tees that are out right now. I'd love to find some in cotton, or at least enough cotton, to dye a pattern (stripes or spiral or whatever) in black lines over the color, but so far the highest cotton content I've seen in them is 60%. I've thought about buying one and seeing what kind of dye coverage I'd get with this idea but my experience with blends leads me to believe it'd be throwing away money. :-\

Is there something about cotton that doesn't hold the color? Why are those tops all polyester and nylon and so little cotton? I certainly don't love them enough to wear anything made of polyester in 104-degree humid Washington DC heat!

I gave away a couple of shirts One of which was the poly blend and one was 100% cotton. Both were extra large mens t's and the poly blend was jerzees and the all cotton hanes I believe. AS it turns out the all cotton did not fit--too tight. As I think about it does the hot wash to remove excess dye cause the extra shrinkage. I know that to dry the shirts I need to go to medium heat otherwise they are damp. I do not dry on hot cotton setting. I plan on using all cotton since the colors are more vibrant but do I need to go up one size? What are your thoughts guys? I plan on doing shirts with transfers on the front so I do not want to have sizing and shrinking issues.

Heres an interesting one. I did a large batch of orange garments with just a small amount of dark pink dyed areas. I must have washed half of them with maybe some darker items in the initial washout (with Synthrapol) and the other half I must have washed with lighter items, because half of them came out still orange and half came out light tan. I have tried boiling out the tan ones several times and absolutely nothing changed. I have tried re washing the lighter orange with another load of darker items and it came out darker like I was hoping but with small spots of blue or purple. This happened several times.

I know, I'm working on a few thing at once right now...my other friend wants a grey wrap turned to a blackberry juice deep purple. Any ideas on what the missing component is? I have imperial purple, gun metal and hot pink, and it's just not quite right yet...

Im dying a baby wrap for a friend, and this blue twill DOES NOT want to take the dye! I'm so frustrated! I've dip dyed it and tried using a spray bottle to put the dye more directly on the fabric, and the ombré is so subtle once it comes out of the wash! I feel like I've wasted 2 days of my time! The wrap is a denim-ish blue color and I'm trying to get it to darken up with dharma procion in gunmetal grey. I tried adding imperial purple to deepen the color, but it only helped a tiny bit. I hate to admit it, but I'm a little afraid of true black dye, and don't own any yet. Any suggestions on what to do to get the stormy grad my friend wants?

I see that Dharma has one mens shirt with one chest pocket for dying. My browser bombed when I was looking. I am wondering if there are any other sources for mens shirts with chest pockets for dying. I am not interested in pocket t shirts but in a regular botton front shirt with chest pockets. Two pockets would be preferred.

I dyed some cotton velour 80/20 poly/cotton with several colors, including Dharma's "Cobalt". I think I used it a bit too much cobalt and the dye was probably over concentrated. I initially hosed it off with cold water then washed it 3 times in the coldRINSE/hotWASH/coldRINSE cycle with synthrapol. Then I additionally boiled water and poured it over (and soaked it a little) TWICE.
After each boiling rinse, the fabric runs clear when running cold water. But if I do a hot iron test between 2 white cotton scraps.... it continues to bleed. Also bleeds when I wrap the damp dyed fabric in white while cold.

I bought a half dozen or so shirts from Michaels located right under the Tulip dye when they were on sale around Memorial day. I dyed some with Tulip and I was disappointed because I did not think the colors were vibrant. I even posted on this site questioning whether Jerzees were good for dying. When I was tying up for the big tie dye last week I noticed that the shirts were 50 50 not 100 percent cotton. No wonder the colors were not so vibrant. I never thought to check since the shirts were right by the dyes. I noticed the same thing at Walmart last weekend. The shirts by the dye were 50 50 not 100 cotton.

After the Batiking should I Fabric Paint or Thicken Dye to Paint?
Hi,
I have a little dilemma.
1. I prepare my garment (soda ashing and then completely hang drying) for dyeing.
2. I make a design and outline the design in a fabric color paint and brush batik wax in the design.
3. I use my pole for arashi and dye my garment by squirting two colors of dye on.
4. I leave the dye on for almost a whole day. Then I rinse the dye in cold water for awhile and then rinse it in a tub of hot water and get the wax off. And that works okay. I'm assuming I can only rinse out the dye one cold bucket at a time and get the wax off, one hot bucket at a time because the two garments have different dyes on them.