A Day of Mandala Making Using Straight Tie Dye Method

Some confusion on my part about what we were doing this day!  We met at Debbie's wonderful house -- a perfect place for dyeing outside!!  They had decided to mandala dyeing which I had assumed was using ice like I do it.  However, they were following a more traditional method of making up liquid dyes from powders and using squeeze bottles to apply to tied cloth, the ties giving the separation of color.  Here all the ladies are making up the dye solutions which were approximately a 6% solution (1 tbsp of dye per cup of water).  They didn't have any urea but because of Debbie's nice soft water, they dissolved perfectly!

Barbara and Debbie tying their bundles.  A good time was had by all!

All starting to tie their bundles.  I had decided that I would stick with ice dyeing and a little show and tell about my process.  Debbie luckily had a bag of ice in her freezer which she allowed me to use!  I didn't do anywhere near as many pieces as I usually put on the grates and was a little too spontaneous with my colors!!

Debbie's first bundle ready to sit for several hours.  This is a direct dyeing technique and requires pre-soaking with soda ash solution and then waiting a little extra time for the dyes to totally take to the fabric.

Anne Hope with her first bundle.

One of Debbie's pieces opened up and laid out to "cure" layered in plastic.  Because we hadn't use urea when making up the dyes, have to be more careful keeping the pieces wet until they are cured.  Urea acts to retain water in the pieces.

The next three pictures show the bundles with their ties.  I don't know who had which grouping.

.Can't wait to see how these all turn out.

 These are my three bins with the ice and dyes already applied.  They melted incredibly fast and were all melted by the time I left!!  I am so used to doing these in my coolish basement up north.

This was bin 1 with Basic Blue, Ultra-violet,  and  grass green .  I had two drop cloths, about six of the small mandalas and a large mandala here.

 This was about the same as the previous one

 This only contained one drop cloth on top and four tightly twisted fat quarters folded accordion style and then twisted around so they took up very little space.  I used strongest red, some yellow and basic blue in this one.

Tomorrow you will see the results of this dyeing.