Painting with Thickened Dyes (Dye Painting)

My dyes are almost a week old but still seem to be producing excellent results. I suspect this is because my basement is cool(er) and because I make dye concentrates at 10% (less water with which to bond ). The last pretreated yardage is in the dryer awaiting the results of yesterday's dye painting. I decided just to take some of the remaining dyes, thicken them and roll and sponge them directly onto the cloth rather than monoprinting. I figured this was a safer approach to insure some color as the dyes should be a lot weaker now after a week.

This is a closeup of the first piece. This was literally done with the colors I had left. First I sponged on blues and greens all over and then sponged on a little golden yellow in empty spaces and then sponged on the mixing red mixed with a little strong orange.

I just directly rollered on colors onto the piece of twill - red on one side of the roller and golden yellow on the other side. It of course made a lot of orange in the middle. Then I outlined some of the shapes with mixing blue. I can't believe how strong these dyes still are -- they are a week old and were only 5% to begin with.

This is of course a closeup of the previous one.

Dye Painting and Monoprinting Tips

1. Use a high concentration of dye to urea water (always use urea water when painting or printing with dyes). I use a 10% solution which is about 2 tbsps./cup of urea water.

2. Make up your dyes a couple of hours before you need them -- yellow especially doesn't want to stay in solution so just keep adding urea powder and stirring before using.

3. Make up your print past the night before -- very thick which is 5 1/2 tbsps/cup of urea water. Put the powder in first and then add the water while stirring. It will be cloudy at first but will thicken and become translucent.

4. Presoak your scoured fabric in soda ash solution for at least 15 minutes and let dry the day before. Cut into the size pieces with which you want to work.

5. A very thick print dye paint can be made with equal parts of print paste and the dye. This will give you then a 5% concentration which is a dark shade of the color. If you want to thin down a little more, use either more dye (darker color) or a little urea water (lighter color).

6. Play with all different concentrations of dye to print paste. You can get it pretty thin before it starts seeping around to the other colors.

7. If you decide to paint with just dyes (no thickener), put another piece of cloth or fleece underneath so you don't get the plastic bubbly effect (unless you want that). Don't soak it too thoroughly or you will force all the soda ash out of the fabric.

8. WHEN YOU ARE PAINTING, PUT ONLY ENOUGH THICKENED DYES THAT YOU WILL USE IN THE NEXT 15 MINUTES INTO ANOTHER CONTAINER. USE ONLY THAT CONTAINER TO DIP YOUR PAINTBRUSH, ROLLER, SPONGE. THE REASON FOR THIS IS THAT SOME SODA ASH WILL TRANSFER BACK TO YOUR APPLICATOR WHILE YOU ARE PAINTING AND THUS MAKE THE DYES VERY REACTIVE WITH A SHORT LIFE (MAYBE AN HOUR). Probably the only exception to this is if you are using very tiny brushes and thus very little transfer back.

9. Cover with a plastic bag loosely. If your dyes are very liquid, expect to see some movement of color. If they are pretty stiff from print paste, they will stay put and there will be no bleeding.

My process now is to let the fabrics batch for about 4 hours and then to roll them up in the plastic I was covering them with. I then fold the bundle and put in my old microwave over for about 4 min/yard, checking a couple of times. This insures that maximum dye has reacted with fiber. Even though these are called cold water dyes, they are even more highly reactive at hotter temps (as long as you don't have too much water). For silk I would use a lot less time and check more frequently. All microwaves are a little different. Mine is an old clunker without even a turntable but it is big.