More Shibori Using Either Direct Dyeing or Low Water Immersion Techniques

Shibori Using Direct Dyeing Methods

A little definition to begin with! Direct Dyeing is also called dye painting and it is basically a process where you either pretreat fabric and then paint with dyes or used untreated fabric and paint with dyes containing either soda ash or sodium bicarbonate or some mix of the two. A more esoteric way is to paint with the dyes and then apply a fix afterwards but for this post, we won't discuss that option.

Direct Dyeing using Pre-Treated Fabric -- To pretreat fabrics, first make sure you have removed any dirt or oils from your prepared for dyeing (pfd) fabric by washing in 1 tbsp of Synthrapol and a couple of tbsps of soda ash. Prepare a bucket of soda ash solution by dissolving 9 tbsps of soda ash/gallon of water. Soak your yardage in this solution for about 10 minutes until it is thoroughly wet. At this point, you can either choose to use the fabric wet or allow it to dry. You will get far more control with the dried fabric or slightly damp fabric.

Direct Dyeing using Dye Activator (Soda Ash) in the dyes -- There is no need to presoak your fabric with this alternative although it is recommended that you wash the fabric first as above. Mix a dry mixture of 1 part soda ash (sodium carbonate) to 4 parts bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). Make your powdered dyes into a liquid form -- I like to use about a 10% solution for my highly concentrated liquid dyes.

Put your liquid dyes (I use about 5% solutions or 1 tsp to 1 tbsp/cup depending on the colors -- more for yellows and less for reds) into squeeze bottles (all the dye vendors sell these -- 8 oz ones should be big enough) diluting the dyes above to half strength .

Clamp or pole wrap your fabrics as you normally would. If pretreating, I would let them dry if you are pole wrapping but it is actually easier to fold them for clamping if they are still wet.

If you are using a pole, find a nice 3 gallon or bigger pail and hold the pole horizontally with the wrapped fabric part over the bucket. Squirt dyes onto the fabric messaging a bit so they do get in. Cover the fabric with color and then keep moist by covering with plastic for 4 - 8 hours. If using turquoise or basic blue, use the longer time. After a couple of hours, it is usually okay to unwrap the piece and lay out flat. Laying it out too soon could cause the dyes to migrate more than you want.

If you want to clamp the pieces, hold them over a dish or any kind of small container and squirt dyes all over. After you have done this a few times, you will know how it will look when done. Again, dump any liquid that remains on the dish and let the piece sit there or in a plastic bag for 4-8 hours. Again, you can unwrap earlier but it takes more space to keep it then.

Make sure when doing either of the above that you get dyes into all the nooks and crannies. You can message a little but don't go overboard. Also be careful when mixing your colors as it is easy to get mud (which is fine if you want mud).

Cover with plastic and let sit for 4-8 hours in an area where the temp is above 70. After this, rinse as you would any other dyed fabric. You will find that these dye painted pieces generally look the same after they are washed as they do after they dry with the dyes and soda ash still in them.

Shibori Using Low Water Immersion(LWI) Methods

It would be almost impossible to use LWI on pole wrapped pieces as you would have to have the dye deep enough to cover the pieces and therefore it would probably be regular immersion dyeing.

However, you can easily accomodate folded and clamped pieces using low water immersion. In fact, you can get a little more control on your finished pieces with more variability in coloring. As in all shibori, fold and clamp your fabric. You can presoak it in a soda ash solution if you desire as this will give you some crisper lines than applying the soda ash later. Treat as you would any low water immersion.

Make up your dye solutions ( again I generally use 5% solutions - maybe a tsp to a tbsp per cup of water). Use about 1 cup of water per yard of fabric to presoak the pieces and then squirt dye or dyes all over making sure to get good penetration unless you want lots of white. Be a little careful to not put complementary colors directly next to each other.

Turn over and make sure the whole piece is covered with some of the directly applied dye (as opposed to that which meandered into the area) and then let it sit in its own juices for about fifteen minutes before adding soda ash. The trick here is to find a container whose size will cause the soda ash and water to submerge the whole piece. It is important that the soda ash solution reach all parts of the clamped or wrapped piece so some "smushing" is a good idea here. (This is another reason that I very often presoak my fabrics with soda ash and then add a little more later on!) Some good candidates are those Rubbermaid separators for silverware drawers for long skinny pieces or leftover Cool Whip containers for those flatter pieces.

About an hour after you have added the soda ash solution, rinse out as normal.

Common Problems with Procion MX Fiber Reactive Dyes

There are a number of things to make your dyeing experience less than positive. As time permits, I will try to discuss a few of the things I have learned along the way. Sometimes just keeping things organized in your dye area can help. I am constantly amazed by the amount of misinformation there is about these dyes floating around the internet. I am certainly not an expert but have about 20 years of dyeing under my belt and know when I am in over my head!!

First, my list of five things you need to make the dyes work:

1. The dye powders. Preferably these are less than 2 years old but I have used many that were much older. The results are not as predictable but they still can work if they have been kept in a cool dry area, tightly sealed. Be cautious about the ones you might find at your local art supply store in very small jars as these can have quite a bit of age on them.
2. Water. This needs to be warm but NOT hot. I have seen a number of dyers recommend hot water to dissolve the dyes. These dyes will will react with water quickly and become much less reactive with the fibers. So keep the water between 80 and 90 degrees if you can. The exceptions to this are turquoise and ProChem's basic blue (the only blue that tends to red) which can tolerate (and even like) a warmer temp.
3. Soda Ash (also known as sodium carbonate and often found as pH+ in your local pool supply store). This is needed to provide the environment in which the dyes can attach to the fiber. The reaction requires a "basic" environment to react.
4. Environmental Temperature above 70 degrees. These dyes will behave very sluggishly below 70 degrees so especially when doing direct dye applications, the ambient temperature needs to be above 70 degrees.
5. Prepared For Dyeing (PFD) Fabric or Fiber. This means that the fiber contains no fillers or finishes. I very much prefer mercerized cottons to those that have not have this process. It makes the colors appear to be much clearer and brighter and darker. However, I have used non-pfd fabric and even fabric with finishes. If you are dyeing something with just a hint of color, these seem to work just fine but don't expect those showy pieces!

Given that you have put a check mark to all the above, these are problems (or opportunities) that seem to come up:

• Splotches of color on the fabric -- this is usually from two causes: (1) the dyes have not fully dissolved in the water and (2) transfer of dye from one surface to another. There are three ways to improve on the first which are to (a) use urea as an additive to the water into which you are dissolving the dye powders. Best to do this by dissolving the urea in the water ahead of time and then dissolving the dyes into this urea water. Urea water is made with 5 1/2 tbsp urea to one cup of water. (b) make your dyes a few hours before you want to use them to make sure the powders are dissolved. The solution should look clear and not cloudy. Cloudy means undissolved dyes. Keep adding urea until the dyes fully dissolve. (A friend uses rain water and it is so soft that she never has to add urea.) (c) if all else fails, strain the dye liquids through those old pantyhose that you will never wear again! The solution to dyes transferring from one project to another is basic. I am a sloppy dyer and I rarely if ever have that problem anymore (but I used to). I now always have a bucket of fresh water next to me and I rinse my gloved hands constantly when moving from one thing to another or before I pick up a piece of fabric.
• The fabric looked great until I washed it - There are several causes of this but the most prevalent is that you forgot to put the soda ash in. Make sure you are using sodium cabonate instead of sodium bicarbonate. Some pool stores are now using sodium bicarbonate as their pH+ so make sure you check the labels. A second set of causes is that you didn't let the fabric stay in the soda ash long enough or the water was too hot or too cold. Another problem occurs if you are using large amounts of water as in vat or washing machine dyeing. You have to use uniodized salt equivalent in weight to the fabric in the dye bath. Otherwise too much of the dye reacts with the water instead of the fabric. Lastly, the dyes may just be exhausted and have no more umph so save them for coloring paper. I have also found that some pfd fabric has been mislabelled and is not really pfd so I get a pale result instead of the brilliance I expected.
• The colors are not what I expected - The biggest culprit here is mixing fuchsia with just about any blue and expecting purple! This is most pronounced with the combination of fuchsia and turquoise. If you are doing vat dyeing and you are stirring like a madman, you might get some decent results. Using low water immersion with fairly hefty percentages of dyes will result in fabric that is mostly fuchsia, a few spots of purple and lots of blue filling in between. Fuchsia does not play well with others in low water immersion applications. Turquoise compounds the problem by being very slow to react as it does like the warmer environment. I have found results more to my liking by doing two things -- for fuchsia I rarely use more than a 1% or 2% concentration and I usually up the concentration of the turquoise by 2 and use warmer water. I also manipulate the fabric a lot more than I would normally.

To be continued.