Playtime ... dyeing flat

I spent a day with a dear friend ... playing ...

This is actually not as bright ... it is amazing how the digital cameras can see more colour than our eyes.
I used up bits of white fabrics. I think this was cotton and spandex.

The photo doesn't do this justice. It is about 12" by 40". It is a fine china silk and was wet before spraying dye on. I pushed folds in the fabric to make it about half the actual length and dried it that way. I think it was a scarf blank ... it has selvage on both sides.

This was a cotton - pinned to a board and I dripped dye down the surface.  I did this on dry fabric and at first it sat as beads, as I dripped more dye, it sank in more.

This is my favorite ...happy white daisies! It is on wet white cotton. I made the centers by wrapping elastics around a circular object and arranging the fabric in folds ... then sprayed the dye on.

We used procion dyes in a liquid form with urea. The cotton fabrics had been treated with soda ash. We used stryofoam boards with plastic taped on, then used a slightly larger piece of plastic, added our fabric and dyed it. To dry, we layered another piece of fabric and slid the 'sandwich' off the board and set in the sun to dry.

There were also some pieces I thought were silk and turned out to be synthetic. Most of the dye washed out. An easy test I should have done is to burn a small piece. Natural fibres form a black/grey ash and synthetics melt to form hard brown beads. I have some transfer dye papers ... think I'll try those and see what happens.

Here is an example of the transfer dyes used on an ipad cover that was pearl grey with an assortment of coffee stains, etc.

Here is a link describing how to work with transfer dyes.
http://vivian-institches.blogspot.ca/2012/12/transfer-paints.html

So many fun techniques to work with and so little time!