community of dyers

Ive been noticing that sometimes when I tie-dye, things will come out very faded looking and not that bright, and sometimes its intense color. I dont get it. I just dyed a whole ton of things including onesies, bibs and hats. the hats came out kind of blah in terms of color brightness (and yet still very cute) but the bibs were crazy intense color. not only that, the onesies were also intense in color. I dont get it. I'm looking at a shirt that I made for my son a couple of months ago and it is no where near as bright as the onesies I made today. I thought that the procion dye will not fade...?

I have a customer who wanted me to dye a dress for her 3 year old daughter and actually went out and bought the dress for me to dye (I dont dye dresses - too expensive)

anyways, she bought this dress that has a lining in it - not only that, but the the top part of the dress is double sided and thick - which scares me. oh - not to mention it has sequins and lace on it as well.

I basically told her that I cant dye it because I dont think it will come out even with the lining. ESPECIALLY since there is this cotton see-through material with designs on it in the skirt part(I have dyed material like this in the past- it may be 100% cotton, but in actuality the see through part is not cotton and will not take the dye. its a very cool effect for bandanas but not for a dress).

I attempted to immersion dye two 100% rayon dresses. I bought them from the store a mustard yellow and want them to both be Black. I use pro chemicals' Deep Black. They rayon did not pick up the color. I tripled the amount of dye that I normally use for Black which is a higher dose than recommended by the company because I found that it needs more to get a deeper hue. Anyways I also dropped some cotton fabric and it colored beautifully Dark.

I don't know if I need to treat the rayon fabric differently before the immersion process.

Please help!! NOw I have two nasty gray dresses, but I'd like to finish the job properly.

I would like to try dying Aprons but I have not had wonderful luck dying cotton canvas so far. I had asked for advice a little while back because the material was so thick that the dye "rolled off"...since then I have been able to dye canvas bags and those cute wallet/purses from dharma but I cant do any real designs because of the thickness of the material...

Is there anyone here who has tried tie-dying aprons? Do they come out good? I just dont want to invest in another item if they dont come out that great or if I cant make any designs on them...

thanks!

~Elisheva
www.groovesters.

I have been having some problems with my squeeze bottles..or more to the point, the actual "squirt part". The new ones have a really small opening that makes it almost impossible for any dye to come out. when I get fed up and cut a small part off of the top to make the hole bigger, the dye comes out WAY too quickly. any suggestions?

~Elisheva
www.Groovesters.com

let me try this again now that I know how to post pictures...

heres some new pictures from my latest batch of bandanas and head scarves - plus some pictures from a sale I had the other night. I went a little nuts and cute and dyed around 130 bandana-ish items to get ready for the upcoming holidays here. Sorry about the very serious looks I'm giving, I was trying to look artsy! I'd love to hear some feedback!

~Elisheva
www.jobshuk.com/groovesters

heres some new pictures from my latest batch of bandanas and head scarves - plus some pictures from a sale I had the other night. I went a little nuts and cute and dyed around 130 bandana-ish items to get ready for the upcoming holidays here. Sorry about the very serious looks I'm giving, I was trying to look artsy! I'd love to hear some feedback!

~Elisheva
www.jobshuk.com/groovesters

(boy, I hope Im putting these pictures in correctly!)

[IMG]http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/DANGERUSLY/IMG_4559.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh270/DANGERUSLY/IMG_4560.jpg[/IMG]

My husband is just not nearly as fascinated as I am with these color gradations LOL... so thought I might share them here with other artists. I've started changing the way I do things and adding dye while pulling fabric out of the water slowly. I'm getting very nice results... smooth subtle color gradients that are just fascinating to me. I've got kind of a niche dyeing baby carriers and this one is for a customer.

I bought one of those "flag's" from dharma (you know, the one with the star on the top) and I have no idea what to do with it. I bought the smaller one so there isnt much room to play around with interesting folds like guitars and whatnot. Any ideas on what or how to dye it?

thanks!

~Elisheva
www.jobshuk.com/groovesters

dyeing silk for wedding dress

Hi all --
Oops, the first time I posted this, I put it as a reply by accident. Sorry. I really would appreciate input from the forum.
I have been contacted to dye silk crepe for a wedding dress. The bride wants a gradient "creep" effect in green. The color she wants is a true green. I'm getting ready to do my samples and test pieces, and I have an entire yard to test. After looking at the prochem color table, the bride picked two colors to start. (She's not picky, but doesn't want the green to lean to yellow or blue.) The colors I'm testing first are leaf green (prochem 700N) and evergreeen (prochem 703N). I know how to do a gradient. So, here's what I am asking for input on:

I love experimenting with colors, getting amazing things and then not knowing how I did it. I think we should all install cameras or something.

anyways, I made this really amazing rust color and I have no idea how to make it again. I know its the deep orange color blended with something else. any ideas? I'd like to even blend it in a bottle and use it as its own color...

thanks!

Elisheva
www.jobshuk.com/groovesters
(www.Groovesters.com COMING SOON!)

I have been working with a small company here in Israel that specializes in baby baskets.

They wanted me to make them something that I just cant seem to get 100% right. I had made two onesies in the past, one with a heart and one with a guitar - and each are surrounded by a circle of pink, then purple and then back to pink and so on. The only thing tied here is the heart, the rest is jus color places on the onesie a bit at a time.

(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4352711&l=52d85&id=608995400 - photo 9)

I LOVE this dress.. and the entire ombre look. Not sure how its even said!

Anyways would this be really hard to do at home? Obviously I cant do the dress but I want the same colors on maybe just a regular white summer dress. If I can't I'm going to fork over the $150 for it (I like it that much)

Any tips?

Just felt like sharing my latest gradation project... a basic ribbed tank from the clearance rack at Ross... now, it just needs to warm up so I can wear it!

I just saw the promo in Dharma's newsletter about bamboo. Has anybody done much dying (and more importantly wearing) of bamboo fabrics? They sound like exactly what my wool-loving Australian husband needs for our Texas summers.
Paula, I looked at your Bamboo socks and they are gorgeous. How did they wear?
Sara

wildtyperanch.com
I blog at downtoearthblog.com

I have some new pics! Have been tie-dyeing linen napkins and placemats. Made a cotton tablecloth which I then dyed. It's all here:

table linens

Here are a couple other items:

other stuff

I haven't done more tie-dye since these items; have been sewing. Finally I'm getting the window treatments for my living room and kitchen done! The living room shades are white linen. So far I've resisted the temptation to tie-dye them! The scraps from that project are what I've been using to make my linen napkins and placemats.

I have been thoroughly frustrated trying to dye nylon slips.. I read what Paula says on dyeing nylon. I washed the slips, used scour from Michele Whipplinger, rinsed them well. I tried Lanaset dyes and Jacquard acid dyes as well as Procion. I can't seem to get a deep color I want. And most of the fabric get smear marks that look like the dye wasn't dissolved well but I made sure it was. Big messy random marks. One slip I put in color remover and was able to get it back to the original color r, which wouldn't remove, but it was even again. I tried again to dye it and messy splotches again? I then laid it flat on saran wrap and painted dye on, wrapped it up and microwaved it but the dye didn't bond, just rinsed out. I then tried the iPoly dye (since it says it's for nylon too). I was able to get one slip to dye evenly and a dark color but I had put a pale pink slip in a brown vat and the slip is now a dark plum color, not brown. I also but a pale pink slip in black iPoly dye and it came out midnight blue and streaky! ARG! It seems like this should be easy but I'm not having good luck. I've tried constantly stirring in a pot on the stove, I've put them in a washing machine to agitate, and still splotchy marks. I've soaked in Oxiclean and tried just about everything I can think of. Is there something obvious I need to be doing or not doing?

I have crumpled my silk scarves (habati) in run off waste water from the muslin that has already reacted with the Soda Ash or baking powder--I've been getting excellent results with the Procion power dyes now for about three months. I decided I wanted to do Silk Scarves but with the dryness in Phoenix, it's more difficult to get the salt effect..

Anyway because of this I have to dye at night when it's cool and there isn't a great deal of light-so sometimes I miss edges..so I put the base color in silk scarves and at times didn't use Soda ash or baking powder and even re-washed it in syntropol again.....

I tossed up a blog post about my latest color-to-color ombre. In case you are interested, it's here.

Pictures will be up some time this weekend. Have a lovely holiday.

I was planning to LWI-dye a shirt (hoodie) for my niece and then overdye it in tie-dye. So I did the LWI with cerulean (blue mx-g), and it turned out so pretty I almost hate to do anything more to it! My plan was to do a spiral with yellow and fuchsia, leaving sections of the pie as-is (blue), resulting in a green, blue and purple spiral.

Any comments/ideas?