Name: jackie

Region: denver co.

Message: I am very new at this; I have taken one class. I have had a vision of silk dyed in the colors of a rainbow. This will be used in color healing, and could double as a wrap. Any help with dye product and technique would be greatly appreciated. Thank You Jackie

The simplest way to do this is to buy a good tie-dyeing kit (such as the Jacquard Tie Dye Kit, or a kit from Dharma Trading Company or PRO Chemical & Dye), plus some extra plastic squirt bottles. 

The kit you buy should come supplied with the standard three primary colors of turquoise, magenta, and lemon yellow. Mix the dyes as recommended, and then use the extra bottles to mix in-between colors. Put one-quarter of your turquoise dye liquid and one-quarter of your magenta dye liquid into a clean bottle to make purple. Combine one-quarter of your lemon yellow with one-quarter of your magenta to make orange. Combine one-quarter of your turquoise with one-quarter of your lemon yellow to make green.

You can also put a small amount of magenta plus a lot of turquoise into another bottle to get true blue, and a small amount of yellow plus a large mount of magenta into yet another bottle to get true red.

You'll probably want to buy a silk sarong or large silk scarf from Dharma Trading Company or Jacquard Products' Silk Connection. It's very convenient to have your fabric pre-hemmwed, and their prices are excellent. There are many different weights and weaves of silk, any of which would be wonderful, in different ways, for your project. The sarongs are typically 48 inches by 72 inches, a good size to wrap yourself in. Prewash the silk before dyeing it.

Next, soak your silk fabric in soda ash (dissolved in water), exactly as described for the Procion MX tie-dyeing recipe. (The good tie-dye kits I recommend contain Procion MX dye.) Squeeze out the extra liquid, then lay the fabric out, either flat or loosely gathered lengthwise, or hang it on a line, handy for you to drip dye over it. Apply your stripes in rainbow/color wheel order: yellow-orange-red-magenta-purple-blue-turquoise-green-yellow, repeating if you like, starting and stopping at whatever point on that rainbow circle you prefer. Most dyers use the yorker-top bottles to squirt and drip the dye directly on the fabric, but you can also use a number of foam paintbrushes to apply the dissolved dye, if you prefer.

Since the fabric is wet and the dyes are unthickened, the dyes will run together, giving a more gradual color change. Start with a wider band of yellow than you expect to want, because the green and orange on each side will creep into it.

After your dye is all applied, keep the fabric moist overnight in order to allow the dyes to form a chemical bond to the silk fiber. If you used urea in your dye mixtures, this will keep the fabric moist without covering (unless your air is very dry); otherwise, cover in plastic. The dye reaction can occur only as long as the fabric is moist. Be sure the place you leave the fabric overnight is warm enough, 70°F or warmer. If you're working outdoors and the weather's below 70°F, cover the fabric in plastic wrap, to keep one color from contaminating another, then roll up the wet dyed fabric and carry it inside to a warmer place in a bucket or plastic bag.

The following day, wash the excess unattached dye out, using cool water at first to remove the soda ash, then hot water to remove all of the excess unattached dye. If you let the reaction go overnight in a warm place, there will be no problem afterwards with getting dye on the wrong part of your fabric and becoming permanent there, because any dye that transfers after the overnight will be temporary, and removable with very hot water.

There are other ways to get smoother, even more subtle gradients/ombré designs (see discussions in the dye forum here and here, for example), and silk can also be dyed with acid dyes, instead of fiber reactive dyes, but this is the very best method for a beginning dyer to use, and your results will be beautiful.

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