Shaving Cream Dying

OK, THIS is really fun. Impractical on a large scale, but FUN.

Shaving cream dying. I was pretty convinced that I had ruined the whole thing. Almost from the get-go, until I hung it up on the line to dry. But it turned out really really nice, and now that I know it works and I was doing it right, I can experiment with more interesting color choices than just plain solid yellow.

Basically, this involves mixing dye with shaving cream, drawing with this dye/cream solution on a bed of cream and water, laying the fabric on it, then keeping it moist for several hours while the dye sets. Then you have to scrape the shaving cream/dye/water solution off the fabric to reveal, finally, your design.

Because, see, it looks like a wad of crap while it’s in progress.

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More Tie Dye

I decided to go ahead with my second batch of tie dye on Monday. I still don’t feel confident enough to work on the nice clothing blanks I purchased, plus I’m waiting for my soy wax flakes to arrive so I can do some batik on them, so I decided to continue experimentation with my prefold diapers. I know people dye them solid colors all the time, but I’ve never seen someone tie dye them. Now, maybe there’s a good reason for that, I don’t know.

I was afraid that the thickness of the diapers would prove to be problematic, but it wasn’t as much of a problem as I’d anticipated it being. What I hadn’t anticipated was how difficult the super absorbency of the diapers would make the process!

This is easily one of my favorites. It’s a flat-fold diaper, folded into a flag fold, held in place by chopsticks, and then dyed. I had intended to dye this one yellow and red, but it was the last one I did and I was all out of already-mixed red dye, so I just did yellow. It occurred to me afterwards that dying a cloth diaper a mottled yellow might not be the way to go, but I do like how it turned out. See the smudge of blue there? More on that later.

This first one here is a preemie size, I tied it up, then rolled it in some spilled yellow in a really random pattern, then applied the red dye. Not my favorite. The second one was Shibori style, but the diaper’s thickness really came into play here, with the dye being unable to penetrate down to the bottom layers. I will probably overdye this later.

The fourth one is accordion-folded with red and yellow dyes overlapping. Wally helped with this one and squirted red in a few places where it wasn’t supposed to go, but it’s not bad looking overall. The last one I love, except for that wayward spot of blue near the bottom. Again, more on that in the next post.

 

My first attempt at Tie Dye

Tie Dye’s been something I’ve wanted to try for years, but never have. I usually hesitate to start new hobbies, you know? Not only do I not need more things to occupy my time, but I also hardly need more supplies to store, right? But I’ve wanted to get a screenprint kit for a while, and I always browse at Dharma Trading Company and dream of the possibilities. And then many friends and fellow bloggers have written or spoken about tie dye lately, and Dharma sells a tie dye kit, and one thing led to another and before I knew it, um, I had a bunch of clothing blanks and dyes and goodies in my cart.

My first attempt was NOT bad, and it was definitely a learning experience.

This one on the left turned out quite nicely, though I anticipated the middle being a lighter green. Too much Dark Blue, overwhelmed the yellow, to make a dark green rather than the grassy green I envisioned.  The one on the right, I like. Your typical bulls-eye tie dye pattern. The colors didn’t mix together as much as I thought they would. (like, I thought it would be orange there in the second ring, not yellow and red.)

This swirl turned out way better than I anticipated. The hankie was hardly bulky and I had a hard time getting the rubber bands tight enough, so the whole thing was kind of floppy while I was dying it. Turned out nice, though. The one on the right is supposed to be Shibori, but it’s, uh, not very good. I like how it turned out, but it’s completely not what it should look like…

I love this one.

This is a little outfit. I like how it looks, but this was a good lesson for me. The green totally overwhelmed the yellow. I really wanted these to be mostly yellow, but put on too much green and blue, which, being darker, completely overwhelmed it.

So I want to combine batik and tie dye. I was having trouble getting the wax hot enough and I was doing this at home alone with Wally, so was reluctant to get out the hot plate to keep it warm at my table like I should probably do. I gave up on the wax and used Elmer’s gel glue, which I’d read about online. My mistake was, I’m pretty sure, I put the glue on the piece AFTER I soaked it in the soda ash solution. It kind of spread/ran more than I really thought it would. The octopus image is totally muddy. But the idea, in general, is not a bad one. If the lines could have been crisper, I would be happier, but it was a good first try with this. I’m not unhappy with it.

So these are all for me. Next time, I hope to be making stuff for the shop. I don’t plan to offer just tie-dyed items, I’ll be doing various things with the items to make them a bit more interesting.