My Life Adventure

December 17, 2007

Our local textile center sent out a mailer advertising their upcoming classes.  Part of one was about snow dyeing (I DO live in Minnesota after all and we have to do SOMETHING with all this white stuff - You know how dyers feel about white!!).  I couldn't take the class but just the description was fascinating.  I had a good bit of left over dye from a dyeing marathon I just completed so figured..... Why not just wing it and see what happens.  So..... this may not be the official method but it is what I am trying.

OK, Day 1 I just poured out a few colors of left over dye onto the snow by our driveway.

It froze overnight but what was interesting is..... it didn't really freeze like an ice cube.  Most of it kept the snow texture!!!  Didn't expect that!

Today I went out and scooped up most of this dyed snow into a bucket

I had several small pieces of P&B dyers cloth which had already been soaked in soda ash and dried on the clothes rack.  I just put a few pieces on the plastic bin lids I use for any number of things.  Then I just grabbed handsful of snow dye and plopped it on the fabric.

Then I thought..... I'm preparing a creative journal for a class I'm taking in January so why not try snow dyeing a page to see what it would look like!  (I had already heard somewhere that leftover dye made a great "paint" for water color paper pages and I had previously done a lot of those)  The paper is at the top of the following picture.

Here is the water color paper page from my journal after the snow melted.  It is not dry yet, though.  I LOVE it and will probably do more pages for my journal with this method!!

So here are pictures of the fabric as the snow is melting.  It is quite a messy project but a lot of fun so far.  I think I will just let them batch where they are overnight.  Moving them mixes the dye too much as I don't want just a lot of brown fabric (although one of the colors I used for this project IS brown)

This one is almost all melted.

OK, check back in tomorrow.  I have to rinse, wash and dry a few color wheels tomorrow so I will process these also.  I'll post the results here tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Comments (5) for "Snow Dyeing - Day 1 and 2"

Kelly, That is so cool. Can't wait to see the final product. Judi By Judi - 12/17/2007 2:01 PM

YOU DID IT!! It looks wonderful. Makes me almost want to have snow here too :-) By Wil - 12/17/2007 9:26 PM

Fantastic! I can hardly wait until tomorrow afternoon. This might make me not hate our Canadian winters quite so much. Shari M Canada By Shari Masson - 12/29/2007 7:24 AM

Kelly, this is way cool. We have snow from Oct to April...next time I dye I will be doing some snow dyeing. Though I think that the dye will freeze like an icecube up here since it is often 30 to 40 below C By Shawna from Yellowknife - 12/29/2007 8:27 AM

Kelly Thanks for the idea of snow dyeing...what fun...I llive in Michigan the upper Mi and have been having fun with your idea..I've been taking photo's and will "try to post" on my blog...(I've not had good luck with using a blog)Janice in Marquette Mi By Janice Simpson - 2/3/2008 3:21 AM