Life giving you snow? Put it to good use!

Thanks to the mountains of snow that mother nature has been throwing at us, textile artists all over have been playing with snow dyeing. After looking at blog after blog of beautiful results, I decided to take the plunge. Only, when I was out at the art store, I got distracted and forgot to buy the dyes!! Luckily I had a tie dye kit that I had bought for the kids but never used because it came with pink and purple as the two colors!

I soaked the fabric, scrunched it, heaped it with snow, mixed the dyes, and poured them on:

It looks like a giant snowcone. But less tasty.

Here is the snow, mostly melted. And my patience, running out. It took 6 hours for the snow to melt:


It is too cold in our house for dye to set properly so I nuked the fabric for 5 minutes (in a craft-only microwave, of course). The results are nothing short of spectacular:



I guess I don't have to wait until spring to start dyeing, eh?!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks beautiful!
Do you think any dye will work with snow? I need to do something about nice silk shirt I ruined in the washing machine. I wander if that method will work.
Olga

Tina in CT said...

Wow, really pretty. I'd never heard of this process.

Katya said...

I have some nice silk dyes... for silk you need a protein reactive dye + acid + heat. So, for example, koolaid makes a great silk dye (it already has the dye + acid), you just need to microwave it for a few minutes to set it.

I have some professional strength silk dyes from a silk painting class I took.

And yes, you can snow dye with silk dyes.

Joe Ganci said...

I've never heard of this either! Wow, it's very cool!

Anonymous said...

It sounds to me that it will be easier to bring my shirt to you.
Olga

Tina in CT said...

I think you have the right idea Olga.

Tina in CT said...

You sure picked the snowiest winter to move back to CT. I bet the boys are loving it and the weekly snow days. The downside is that the school year will go to the end of June.