Dyeing on Ice!

Have your heard of Ice Dyeing?  Well yesterday my blogging friend, Marie, was telling me that most of her wool has been hand dyed by herself...and that recently she tried ICE dyeing and had great success!  Of course I asked her what Ice Dyeing was...Well, Marie did such a great job telling and showing me how it's done, that I thought that I would share it with you too!  So without further adieu...here is this morning's Guest Speaker...

Marie:

Here are my two pieces of wool that I dyed using ice cubes and Cushing Dye. The pieces of wool are different depending which side you have up. 

Side one...

And flipped to show side two of the same pieces of wool.

This is what I did. I bought a large roasting pan with handles at Good Will for $4. (You don't want to use dye in pans used for cooking). Into the pan, I put two pieces of wet wool, side by side, covered in water, with a drop of Jet Dry and let them soak for an hour. I drained the water and scrunched up the wool, then covered the wool with ice cubes.  And using Cushing dyes I used a tiny (less than 1/8 to 1 tsp) for hit/miss measurement.  I picked 4 random colors of red. Using one tsp of each color, I tapped the spoon so the powder "sprinkled" over the ice. I did this on one of the pieces of wool. Then on the other piece of wool, I used 3 greens and a Khaki color.  I covered the pan with tin foil and put it in oven @350 for 1 hour. Then I measured out 1/4 C or so of vinegar, filled the rest of the cup with water to make 1 C of liquid and poured it over the wool, covered it again with foil and cooked for another 1/2 hour. The water wasn't clear, so don't concern yourself. (I didn't think to save the water to dye something else). Then I rinsed the wool and put both pieces into dryer-----and that's it! Could I duplicate it?------not in this life! I just wanted to try this and was very happy with what I got. Some of the red ran into the green piece and made some blue/purple for added interest!


 I am currently using the red wool to hook some flowers for a chair mat.  I am enclosing a picture to show you how the mottled red wool makes for some interesting petals!  Hope you find this helpful and enjoyed my experiment in ice dying.


                                 
I did indeed enjoy it, Marie...THANK YOU for taking the time to type up your instructions and send us the pictures! Your chair mat is going to be adorable!  Now we can all dye some wool using ice and cushion dye!  You made it sound simple and very do-able!  I know that I am definitely going to give this a whirl! What about you?  Are you going Ice Dyeing today?

Have a magical Monday and Happy Stitching!!P