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Sunset I
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The yellow and red in this one are Rit dye (heat setting), the blue is from the same Tulip kit as the last one (time setting). I had planned for the colors to go yellow/orange/red/purple, but as you can see that didn't quite happen. Other than the fact that you start with boiling water, Rit dye is easy to work with and gives both intense color and fast results. You let the fabric soak in hot dye for 30min, rather than overnight like the Tulip dyes, then rinse it out. The interesting pattern around the ends happened when the Tulip blue wicked up into the red area while sitting overnight.
Closeup Left
Closeup Right
The yellow and red in this one are Rit dye (heat setting), the blue is from the same Tulip kit as the last one (time setting). I had planned for the colors to go yellow/orange/red/purple, but as you can see that didn't quite happen. Other than the fact that you start with boiling water, Rit dye is easy to work with and gives both intense color and fast results. You let the fabric soak in hot dye for 30min, rather than overnight like the Tulip dyes, then rinse it out. The interesting pattern around the ends happened when the Tulip blue wicked up into the red area while sitting overnight.
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I'm impressed that you got such vibrant colours from Rit dye actually. Both what I have read and what I have experienced personally has left me avoiding using Rit for tie-dye at all. The Tulip kits are great, IMHO, they contain the fiber-reactive dyes which can be rather expensive to purchase from actual producers (there is one place just outside of my city, but I'd only be going there if I planned to set up a tie-dyed clothing business or something.)
I wonder if the difference is in the material? My experiences with Rit dyes have always been on cotton of varying thicknesses/thread counts.
The photos of my tie-dying from last summer don't do it much justice, but the one pair of pants I did had some very dark blue come out on them. It's a bit faded now from being out in the sun and me washing the pants a few times, but still rather obviously dark blue. And that's from a Tulip-brand fiber-reactive. Again, might be the material, and that dark blue is a separate bottle I picked up along with a kit (the kit contained turquoise, which I also used on the pants.)
I am very interested in your projects with this, and also in how they will weather over time! I think being a scarf rather than a pair of pants will help with fading, shouldn't need as much washing and all that. But I have no experience with tie-dyed silk anything. :) Or, again, Rit on silk.
Lovely, lovely work again! Sorry for my rambles, but believe it or not you're the only person I know right now who has taken up an interest in tie-dyeing. I have lots of friends who want to do a group tie-dyeing session with me, with t-shirts or something they find at home, but they are not terribly interested in the whole process like I am. :) I do hope to move onto silk, I want to start making tie-dye art. Seeing what I can do to combine batiking and tie-dye. Fun stuff!
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Was flipping through some of my tie-dye links and realized that most of the reviews I read about fiber-reactive dyes are for cellulose fibers, so yeah silk or wool are definitely not in that category! Silly me.
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One brilliant website where I'm pulling this information from is here: http://www.pburch.net/dyeing.shtml Again, sorry if you've found that site already. :) It looks like you could even use things like vinegar, food colouring, and a microwave to tie-dye your silk! At least, that's what the website is telling me. So nifty!
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Usually when I see people getting bland or faded results from Rit dye, it's because they haven't used hot enough water. When the instructions say "near-boiling", they mean it. (I heat distilled water to boiling in an electric kettle, mix the dye with that, and get the fabric into it as quickly as possible.) Sometimes it's tricky to manipulate the fabric without touching the saturated areas, so it's useful to keep a pair of tongs or chopsticks around for that. Since I've only been preparing small batches, my results are closer to those from the low-water immersion process than standard tie-dye.
Food coloring is way more expensive than fabric dye, weight for weight. Stuff that's safe to eat needs higher purity and better quality control. :)
Your plans for batik sound interesting! When you get around to it, please post pictures.
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