Last winter my Mom said, “I want to dye fabric this summer.” Now, you have to know…. When my Mother gets on to something, she means it. She proceeded to spend the rest of the winter (in between all of her other projects) reading every book on fabric dyeing she could find.  One fine Spring day she called me up, “So, I have been reading a lot of books about dyeing.” I said, “Mom! Why are you reading about dying? I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” After she stopped laughing for an uncomfortably long time, she said, “No! FABRIC dyeing!” #awk-werd

She ordered special dyes and fabrics online and all the chemicals and water softeners we would need. When the weather got nice, we started some dyeing projects. First, it was “sun-dyeing.” Here is how it turned out……

We soaked the fabric in soda ash, then painted with her special fabric paints. We chose some decorative items to place on top of the fabric and left them out in the sun. (If you’re going to do this, I suggest using items that sit quite flat to the fabric and leave out in the sun for at least a couple of hours.)

Our next mission was marble dyeing. This required not knowing how hard it was going to be ahead of time  special marbling paints, building a frame  and using chemicals for the water to make the paint sit on top. This process was very difficult and just as we were giving up on it, we gave it one last go and sure enough – it worked! When I showed my hippie hubby, he had one word: psychedelic

Our latest adventure was ice-dyeing. This crazy venture required scrunching up your fabric, piling it high with ice cubes and sprinkling paints on top of the ice. As it melts, the paints do crazy things. Totally unexpected things. But that’s the fun of dyeing fabric. It’s kinda lak a box ‘o chocolates …. (use Forrest Gump’s voice here) Ya neva know whatcha gonna get.

Well, here’s what we got…..

You can see in this photo above that the fabric took on that mesh design from the screen we had it sitting on. I love how the pink and black morphed into this grey, swirly, galactic design.

This teal and red is so amazing up close. It is rich with jewel tones.

The chevron piece below was one I did without any ice. I painted it, scrunched it up and let it sit in the sun for awhile. Mom thought I should open it up for a bit and see what happens. Sure enough, the sun affected the wrinkles in the fabric, giving it even more texture.

This piece below is my favourite of the day. Mom suggested that I try dyeing some sheer fabric I had just picked up at a fabric sale. I never would have thought to do this. So glad I did! The lovely sheer sea green was beautiful before but after covering it with ice cubes and sprinkling it with salmony coloured dye, it turned into a gorgeous shade of gold with some lovely marbling. Can’t wait to turn this piece into an infinity scarf.

We have been having a lot of fun with our fabric dyeing adventures. I received the teabag paper in the post today from Jackie Cardy! http://dogdaisychains.blogspot.ca/   I can’t wait to try and dye that!

Painting and dyeing fabric has always been a scary notion to me. Wellll, except when I wanted to bleach my jeans in the ’80s. And also when my daughter was little and needed “cobalt blue” tights for her choir recital. Seriously? Won’t “navy blue” do? (Camera-Cut to me boiling white tights in a pot on the stove with some RIT I bought at Safeway at 11:00 pm the night before.)

My Mother is brave. A piece of white fabric is a canvas to her. Brave and adventurous. And incredibly creative. I can’t wait to do a blog post on her and the amazing projects she has worked on.  Did I mention she has a great sense of humour, too? She still laughs about the book on dying. #dyeingnotdying

* i n t e r e s t i n g  f a c t *

My Mother used to dye wool back in the ’70s using all natural dyes like onion skin, carrot, teabags, etc. (that’s another blogpost)