Project by Jo Hart
Todays blog post is all about Ice dying, its something I've wanted to try for ages, I have admired for such a long time the beautiful pieces of fabric people create with this technique and I’m super excited to give it go myself!
So lets get started… Supplies:
Fabric Dye – I used Dylon handwash dyes, theses were £3 each and i picked mine up from Dunelm and The Range.
Soda Ash – this I couldn’t find in any stores but Amazon had it! (Amazon has everything!)
Something to dye your fabric in, You will need a bucket and something like a colinder or a bath rack, anything with holes in really so the excess water from the ice melting can drip through the fabric and into the bucket. These are the things I had to hand…
100% cotton fabric – The wonderful folk at Craft Cotton Co sent me 3 mtrs of their Homespun plain cotton in white and I cut it apart into 6 half metres for the dying.
And finally some Ice – you could make your own, I was feeling lazy and bought a bag from co-op
Step 1, Prewash your fabric, this step is important as there may be a coating of some kind on the fabric from the manufacturing stage and could affect how the dye applies.
Step 2, Prepare the Soda Ash by mixing 1 cup with 1 gallon of water and soak your fabric submerged in the solution for around half hour. Ideally you want to put this in a container with a lid as it can be kept and re-used until it’s gone. (I’ve dyed around 10 mtrs of fabric so far and there is still some left so this stuff does go a long way!)
Step 3, Squeeze the excess liquid from the fabric, arrange the fabric into the dying rack and cover with ice. Now the fun part! start sprinkling the fabric dye over the ice and watch the magic happen!
As the ice melts you will start to see all the wonderful colours and parts of the fabric where colours have mixed together.
Step 4, Once the ice has fully melted you need to rinse the fabric until the water runs clear and wash twice in the washing machine with a few colour catchers each time and voila! you have beautiful new one of a kind fabric!
The green and blue were so vibrant when dying as you can see in the pics above but came out super muted once washed… still very pretty though.
The pink, orange and purple dyes on the other hand stayed pretty vibrant!…
I have to say I have absolutely loved this whole process, The end results are beautiful and I’m totally addicted, It really is quite easy and I cant wait to do some more maybe with different types of cotton next time like poplin, seer sucker and double gauze. Now all that’s left to do is to make some pretties with these! watch this space xx
Thankyou so much for reading, I hope you will give this a go too!
Until next time..
Happy Sewing! xx
Jo xx
To see more from Jo, visit her on Instagram @unicornharts
Made by Jo Hart for The Craft Cotton Company 2020
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