The Very Last Ice Dyeing of 2013....

Well, there was half a bag of ice left in the freezer and despite having to get ready to head south, I couldn't help myself and did my last bunch of ice dyeing!  This time I switched back to 2 yard pieces of sateen -- yes, I have really been delving into the long hoarded sateen as I thought these experiments deserved the best!!  I am out of a lot of colors of dyes by this point (yay) so dipped into some that I hadn't used before like the Basic Blue (the only red/blue pure dye), some quite old Boysenberry which I never thought was strong enough and Lemon Yellow which I dislike usually so I mixed it with the Sun Yellow which is my favorite -- these are both pure dyes..  It certainly did the job in these high concentrations!!  I had an interesting experience with this and another piece.  I was in such a hurry to apply the dyes that I did so on part of the piece BEFORE I added the ice.  I just covered it with ice.  Since it was the Basic Blue which takes its time to bond, it worked out just fine.  Red wouldn't have and would have resulted in speckles.

This was the piece I was most dissatisfied with as it had just too much white in it.  I thought the rest was interesting enough that it made up for it!  I tried in this piece to mix up the warm and cool colors so that there was a bit of a look of a flower garden.  I didn't have any green left so used some  yellow with the blues.

I am not sure what was in this one except for there was red (strongest red which is a mix) and a mix of lemon and sun yellow as well as strong orange.  I don't know whether I added any brown or blue to this -- have no idea!!  This one I actually think looks even better in person.

Again, this was the same mix as the piece above.  I should note that these were all 8 repeats -- accordion folded three times (resulting in four layers) and then folded in half. The resulting piece is then the size of a fat quarter (22x18) before it is scrunched to about 1/4 that size.

This piece was the exception and was quite a bit wider than the 2 yards.  I folded it resulting in 8 repeats across the fabric and didn't fold it in half.  

I should note that this time I put some fabric underneath the fabric with the ice and let the dyes drip down on it (I had pretreated it with soda ash as well).  I did not like the results although there were some interesting patterns but lost with the speckles caused by bits of dye that went down with no water.  I have become obsessed with pattern, I am afraid!!

I want to thank two of my readers who were disturbed that I reported that Marshall Dry Goods no longer had pfd cotton.  They called and found that they do still carry it.  They had just forgotten to add it back to their website after they were out of it for awhile.  I have no idea what the current cost is but the last batch I got was a really good quality and cheaper than anyone else.