Snow Day, Snow Dye

Over the years, I've gotten myself into a regular habit of dyeing fabric every time we have a good snow. At the beginning of this month the temperature dropped and we got a lovely dump of the white stuff. AND I completely forgot about snow dyeing until my friend Brenda reminded me. I guess I was so disgusted about the horrible weather that doing something enjoyable simply didn't cross my mind.

After Brenda's comment about the weather on Facebook, I ran downstairs and cut up 6 lengths of white cotton fabric that were 20" long. I've been trying to use up my stash of old dye powders so grabbed a yogourt container of Slate Blue, a container of Bright Yellow and some Fuschia and Turquoise dyes. The blue and the yellow dyes are at least 15 years old.

When I plan for specific dye colours, I use carefully measured amounts of dye powders. When I snow dye, I never know what the results will be so, I am not very careful about what I do.

This time I scrunched up 2 lengths of dry fabric into my baskets. I piled snow on the fabrics and spread it evenly on both fabric lengths in each basket.

I used the Slate Blue on all 3 of the baskets. I sprinkled dye powder with a heavy hand on the back half of each basket and a bit lighter hand sprinkling dyes on the front half. I then sprinkled the Fuschia, Bright Yellow and Turquoise on the front half of the baskets with a bit going to the back half.

I left the snow to melt overnight.

When blue and pink (red) are mixed together the result is purple. Mix blue and yellow and you get green. The blue and turquoise results in some great blues.

Once the snow was melted, I mixed up some Soda Ask with hot water and poured it over the fabrics and let that sit again overnight. I tend to take my time when I snow dye. So the process becomes a multi-day activity with little actual work involved.

It took me a few days to get back to the fabrics and I simply threw them all into the washing machine and washed with hot water and a bit of Dawn. The dishwashing liquid helps to keep the excess dye molecules in the water suspension and very rarely do I end up with the dyes in my hand dyed fabrics bleeding.

Now I have the challenge of deciding on how I'm going to use these fabrics. I've got 6 lengths of fabric for a total of 12 Fat Quarters (3 meters) that are totally unique pieces of art.