Ice Dyeing With Silk

Let's get started!

Pre-wash your fabric with the Dyer's Detergent. This will remove any fabric softeners, oils, dirt, etc that might have gotten on your dyeable blanks or fabrics during manufacturing or through handling.

Tie up your fabric in any fold pattern you like, we did all in loose spirals to compare how each takes the same color dye.

Mix up your soda ash, 2 cups per gallon of water, and add in your tied fabric. Let them soak for about 10-15 min. Pull them out and squeeze out the excess solution (wear good rubber gloves). You can save the soda ash for more dyeing later.

Place your wire rack in a tub (we used an old dish drainer). Put your tied bundles on the rack.

Pro-Tip- you can make collars with aluminum foil like we did to help keep the ice on top of each fabric bundle. Makes your ice go a lot farther.

Next, cover everything in ice. We used 1-2 inches of ice, enough to cover the fabric.

Pro-Tip: You want to cover the dyeables as much as you can, as areas with no ice will likely end up staying white as the ice melts.

Time to put the dust mask on! We are going to be using the dye powder and we want to be safe about not inhaling any fine particles of dye.

Grab your first color (if using more that one) and start sprinkling the dye powder on the ice. Be as random or as specific as you want with how you spread the dye. Remember, as the ice melts colors will mix and blend as they hit the shirt. So if you put yellow and blue together, you will get greens. On the other hand, part of the fun is that "mix" colors will split up a bit into their component colors, giving you neat effects. You can use this to your advantage when choosing your colors.

Once everything is sprinkled to your liking, cover the tubs with some plastic and let the melting progress. Putting the tubs in a warm place can speed things up. Let it all sit this way for 24 hours. When you come back 24 hrs later, your bundles will look like this:

Inside the tub may look like a big pool of black or brown but don't worry, the fabric isn't going to end up all muddy, we promise. The items were elevated so the melt water could drain away and are a little less scary looking.

Take your tubs over to the sink and start rinsing your bundles in COLD running water. Rinse until the water is running mostly clear. Then untie them and keep rinsing.

Finally, toss everything in the wash with HOT water and Dyer's Detergent. Dry and iron, then it is ready to cut and sew!

8mm

12mm

16mm

We used three weights of our silk Habotai, 8mm, 12mm, and 16mm. In this photo below you can see, from left to right, how the weight of the silk affected the dyes flowing through the fabric.