This weekend's project has been dyeing some cotton jersey cut yardage. I wanted to duplicate the effects I got from "baggie dyeing" woven cotton yardage, so I poked around the Internet and assembled this library of links.
Procedure used on this fabric: I accordion-pleated the wet fabric, coiled it in a wash pan, and poured on my dye solutions (Procion MX dyes, "fuchsia" and "turquoise"). After half an hour, I added the alkaline fixative (soda ash) the same way. After a few hours I turned the fabric over so that both sides of the fabric would stand in the shallow fixative solution. I let it stand about 16 hours at 80 degrees F before washing. It doesn't duplicate the delicate detail of the small batch methods described below, but it'll do.
- Paula Burch's All About Hand Dyeing pages. This is the best hand-dyeing Internet reference I've found. It includes many tutorials on different types of compression-dyeing, including tie-dye.
- Dharma Trading Company has, in addition to all sorts of supplies, detailed dyeing directions and mouthwatering projects.
- Bandhej or Bandhni is the Art of royalty. A description of the traditional Indian tie-dye method.
- Bandhani, Tie and Dye Technique Another discussion of the traditional Indian tie-dye, covering different ground. The small sample images suggest how sophisticated the traditional patterns are, compared to the hippie-festival tee-shirts we usually see.
- Our Tie-Dye Process and Techniques from The Kind Dyes gives some clues about how they create their distinctively-patterned tee shirts.
- Basic Tie-Dye Techniques by Erowid give some general tips on creating different patterns on flat fabric.
- Tie Dye from Marco Schuffelen, with good pictures and good directions. I was also fascinated by his other Web materials.
The following references show how to hand-dye small amounts of fabric to create a "palette" of different fabrics for quilting and other patchwork projects. I find the techniques don't necessarily scale up from quilters' fat quarters to yardage sufficient for a garment, but I really like the looks, especially the color gradient dyeing projects in Adriene Buffington's book and Heidi Lund's study group project.
- Dye It! Paint It! Quilt It!: Making and Using One-Of-A-Kind Fabrics in Quilts. Authors Joyce Mori and Cynthia Myerberg present an array of dying techniques, directions, and recipes for dying small amounts of yardage to use in quilts. The strong point of the book is the inspiration section--quilting blocks featuring hand-dyed fabrics. It may be out of print, but Amazon.com offers several used copies, starting at a reasonable price.
- Hand-Dyed Fabric Made Easy by Adriene Buffington. 55 pages. I bought this book six or seven years ago. It also seems to be out of print--Amazon.com offers it from $26 to $144 for a 55-page booklet. If you can find it somewhere at a reasonable price, it's quite good, but you can get the basic techniques from the following Web sites for free, and once you've tried the techniques, you can go off on your own tangents.
- Wearable Art Study Group: Baggie Dyeing with Heidi Lund
- Immersion Dyeing with Procion Cold Water Dyes is also aimed at quilters who want small amounts of many different-colored fabrics.
- Fabric Dying 101: free step by step instructions and recipes for creating your own hand-dyed cotton fabrics using Procion MX dyes
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