Dye Painting and Overdyeing

I'm exploring dye techniques. After doing lots of varieties of tie-dye, and fabric dye samples, I'm moving into overdye, and painting techniques. The first pic is a tie-dyed T-nightgown I gave to Sarah. Everyone in the family has been getting T-shirts and oft times, matching socks. I'm a sock person, liking them with my sandals.

I had some T's I dyed that I wasn't in love with their colors, so I started overdyeing, and I'm really liking the added depth. I did a mixture of hand-painting the dye with a brush, and then I love the sponge texture - I've used my one sponge for everything, including my home's entryway walls. The next pic is a T-shirt for Heather. It's original colors were moreso gray and gray-blues, maybe a touch of light pink and gold - I don't remember. But I spattered dye and sponged.

The next pic is of overdyeing a light blue with yellow T. Most of the extra color is with the sponge and a bit of hand-painted large ovals, like daisy petals. But then I spiraled the shirt, bound loosly with lots of rubberbands, and immersed in a bucket of black dye, leaving in for several hours. I'd made up the black dye bath a few days before. I'm always amazed at how dyes don't mix that much (unless I agitate them a lot right away). It's a chemical reaction called "striking" that happens- like in the first 15 minutes. At first I expected to rinse them and expect all dark, like they look when wet.

Most of my dyes are in 8oz squeeze bottles I store for several weeks. I'll make them up fresh when whatever I'm doing has to have very exacting colors. I don't add soda ash to my dyes because otherwise they need to be used up that day. I keep a soda ash solution in a bucket for however long it takes till it's all used up- maybe months. I soak everything I dye in the soda ash solution for about 20 minutes and wring - leaving wet for most dyeing, or hanging to dry and dry-dye later - like for batik, stenciling, stamping, and screenprinting ...

A shirt I did for Monte similar to this is blacker cuz of immersing when the dye was fresh made - he wanted a pair of brown pants to be black. All the later additions to this dyebath are more a blue-black. All blacks are made up of other colors, and those colors disperse in varying ways - like drop a blob on paper towel, and when dry, you'll see outer rings of blue or fuchsia or blue-green. As too with most colors - very few are pure colors. The operative word here is FEW - like in - 3 primary colors making up all colors.

On this note of over-dyeing clothes - I've done it for years. I've been hooked on second-hand clothes shopping since I was a teen. A lot of the baby clothes I dyed - rather than pastels - deep blues, maroons, and greens... And I've dyed bathrobes I like over and over, changing colors, till they fall apart. Monte has started looking thru all his clothes and giving me shirts to overdye. In the past he's had me dye suits for a color change too. Dawson just gave me a pattern to try and dye-paint on a shirt for him. And he gave me a black shirt he wants me to practice on - a discharging technique.

My next pic is of total hand-painting, with some spatters and sponging - a dress and matching socks. What I learned ... I LOVE the technique, tho time-consuming. Thus, I'll be moving into making my own stamps for repeat printing. And I'm going to start thickening the dye, so less running in most cases.

I'm in need of more yogurt, so while writing this post, I'm making more. I'll post yogurt making soon at my Karey's Kitchen blog. The kitchen table is full of geology related pictures I printed along with several serpentinite photos - some of them already printed on inkjet paper and ironed on fabric. This month's color challenge is "analogous" and most serpentinites are greens (tho when in Boston we saw lots of pinks-to-reds. You'd think them marble. When watching movies, Monte's always pointing out serpentinite - it's everywhere! And since, as he's talking his science lingo, he's using talk of DNA and blueprint ... I'm trying to create an Art Quilt for him. When done I'll post a pic.)

Wonder Full Creativity!