SNOW DYED FABRIC

Here in Nonesuch, KY we received over 15 inches of snow last week. On Friday, there were forecasts of rain and temperatures high enough to melt the snow, so, I decided to do some Snow Dyeing before the snow was all gone.

I don't know what I was thinking since there was way too much snow to melt very quickly and the temperatures were going way down. There's plenty of snow left to do more experiments with Snow Dyeing.

It really is an experiment. This one had some fantastic results and some really good results.

 Here are some of the fantastic results. These are about 36" x 18" pieces of cotton sateen.

Cotton Sateen

Cotton Sateen

 

Cotton Sateen

I love these pieces so much, that I'm going to quilt them as whole cloth quilts. It will be my first time doing something like that and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Especially, when I start adding beads.

Here are some examples of a Silk/Linen Blend. These are about 30" by 45".

Silk/Linen Blend

Silk/Linen Blend

The Silk/Linen blend takes the differently on each side of the fabric. The shiny shiny silk side is shown here. It looks very vibrant in the shiny side. The duller linen side has muted look that is very organic in look.

It is interesting to use various fibers, as they each take the dye in a unique way.  I can never tell how they are going to turn out.

I dyed two larger pieces of Silk Velvet. They were about 54" X 50" in size. My conclusion here is that smaller pieces work better with the snow dyeing. The velvet took the color really well but the blues and greens turned out too dark and too solid in color. That said, I love this piece and also plan to quilt it as a whole cloth quilt.

These are not all of the pieces that I dyed. They are the ones that I like the best.

I did some on a silk/cotton blend using red dyes. There is a lot of white space on that piece. It will be cut up and used in projects.

I've come to the conclusion that the best snow to use is the heavy wet kind. This snow was really fine and dry. Just one five gallon bucket was more than enough snow. I could not get it to pack down on top of the fabric. When I checked on it a few hours after getting it all ready to go, the snow was not producing enough liquid to cover all of the fabric.  I sprayed it all with water and gently poked the dye further down into the fabric. It might be a good idea to spray dry snow before adding the dye powders.

This was a fun experiment and I'm really pleased with my newly dyed fabrics. I'm hoping to get some more done.

CREATING WITH JOY,

Karen