community of dyers

You can get very nice effects with low water immersion. You can even do hybrids, in which you loosely tie a garment before immersing it, or pour dye more particularly on some parts than others. The results are rather unpredictable, as with tie-dyeing. Some of those designs you attached look like LWI, not tie-dye. You'll want to do some trial and error. Probably anything you do will look good, if you choose colors you like and that go together, once you get the hang of using enough dye, and anything that doesn't come out so well can be dyed again to make it darker and more interesting.

I would recommend that you start dyeing with something smaller and cheaper than a dress or a skirt. If you or a friend or relative ever wears t-shirts, even to mow the lawn, that's a good choice for testing on. You can buy good t-shirts for $3 apiece from Dharma Trading Company, or you can buy flimsier underwear-type t-shirts locally, if you're careful to buy 100% cotton which is not stain resistant. Baby onesies are great for testing because they are small, and they make wonderful gifts. Dresses tend to be $18 and up, so it's a nice idea to get a feeling for how this works for you before you start on dyeing a dress. Start buy buying maybe half a dozen t-shirts, or at least three, I'd say. You can buy the dresses at the same time if you like (my experience is that Dharma's dresses run small), but dye something small first.

You'll need some containers to put the garments in to dye them. The more tightly squashed into the container, the more dramatic the color gradations. Larger plastic boxes are good for just pouring different colors of dye on where you want, without the lighter regions. You will want to experiment with this. You can use glass bowls or ceramic or plastic, small plastic buckets, large plastic pitchers, small plastic storage bins, or large (2 or 4 cup) glass measuring cups. The only thing you can't use is something likely to leak, or a metal pan, which might react with the soda ash.

Pick out some colors you like from the Dharma catalog—you want Procion MX dyes, not iDye—or from another good mail-order dye supplier. Their prices and selection are far better than your local crafts store, and shopping takes a lot of energy anyway. You'll want to start with cerulean blue, lemon yellow, turquoise, grape, fuchsia and/or light red (these are Dharma's names), cobalt blue, new black, and probably some green mixture that appeals to you (though you can mix any green with the above colors). Or you can just start with the tie-dye kit triad of lemon yellow, turquoise, and fuchsia, and buy more colors later.

You will also need to buy soda ash. The easiest thing to do is to order it along with your dyes. You can also buy it in a plastic jug or bucket, as sodium carbonate, at a hardware store or pool supply store.

You'll want to experiment with adding salt, but ordinary granulated salt from the grocery store is good for this; buy the non-iodized sort, if you see it. If your water is very hard, you should order some water softener (sodium hexametaphosphate) along with your dyes, and use only softened water for dyeing and even for washing out (add the water softener to the wash water).

The dyeing itself is easy, as described on my page "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing":

• Crumple your cotton t-shirt up and place it in a container. How you do the crumpling will partially determine the shapes the colors you add take. It can look very much like tie-dyeing. I usually lay the garment flat on the floor or a table and wad it up loosely in the shape I want there, then transfer it to a small bucket or straight-sided bowl.
• Then take a glass measuring cup and dissolve about a teaspoon of dye: do this by first pasting up the dye, using a spoon to mash it up with about an equal volume of water, then, once it's a smooth paste, add more water and stir, a total of about a cup of water, until the dye is all dissolved. (If stirring is a problem for you, you can use a cheap immersion blender, such as is used for soup, though you should buy one just for this purpose and not use it for food again. Do not use an immersion blender in a container that is not tall enough: it makes a mess!)
• Pour this dye mixture over all or part of your shirt.
• Repeat this procedure with another color, then add more cups of water if necessary to bring the water-dye level up, not quite as high as the top of the fabric.
• Leave this to soak for a few minutes, then dissolve some soda ash in water and pour it over. Do not stir the fabric. The soda ash will penetrate everything even if you just layer it on top. I usually use one teaspoon of soda ash per cup of the total volume of water added, but half as much will be sufficient.
• You can dissolve a teaspoon or two of salt in the water with the soda ash, if you like; it seems to increases the crystalline patterns. (Don't add the salt to the water you dissolve your dyes in, because it makes it harder to dissolve them.)
• Finally, go away, leaving the dye to react with the fabric, for at least one hour, or overnight. (Overnight is better if you want to be able to wash the garment with another one in a contrasting color; leaving the dye reaction overnight ensures that there is no remaining unreacted dye to permanently stain a lighter-colored piece of fabric.) It should be in a warm place, 70°F or warmer, for the dye reaction.
• When it's convenient for you, dump the excess dye down the drain, then rinse the shirt with cool or room-temperature water.

Rinsing out Procion MX dye takes a lot of water. You can leave the shirt in the container you dyed it in at first, just using the spoon to keep the fabric from falling out of the container as you tip it to drain it. You don't have to wring the fabric, but you do need to unwad it to completely rinse it out. At any point you can add the garment to the washing machine instead of hand-washing, if that's easier for you, running it through with first cool and then hot water. Leave the shirt to soak in hot water to help get out the rest of the unreacted excess unattached dye.

An important point is that you can leave this process to go rest at any point in the process. Be sure you have a work surface that is a convenient and comfortable height for you, supplied with a source of water and a place to dispose of the excess. I work at my kitchen sink with a thick layer of newspaper protecting the counter; you could also work outside, with a table set up at a convenient height, a hose as a source of water, and a large bucket to pour your water and dyes into to dispose of them temporarily. It's important to work without stooping over, which will wear you out quickly.

Paula