Adventures in tie-dye: heat-set dye

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Sunset I
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.

Comments

[serenissima]

That turned out gorgeous!

[scatteredshells]

That turned out absolutely lovely. :)

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!

[solarbird]

Wow, such results with Rit! I am impressed! Very nice!