Fun with Dyes

Here is "Project I've been meaning to do for three years" #57.  I had a couple items of clothing that were too stained for me to wear respectably, and also a skirt that I liked the shape of but found the colour drab.  So I thought I'd revive my former love of tie-dye, and also experiment with dip-dying.









I used Dylon's Intense Violet dye, intended for 250g of fabric.  My clothes weighed closer to  500g, but I didn't really want an intense colour so hoped it would work out well.  I actually had far more trouble than I expected finding a dye I was happy with.  Dylon have changed their packaging recently, seemingly reduced their colour range and trebled their price.  It took me a while, and visits to a lot of different shops to accept this was true.  I don't mean to pick on Dylon, their weren't any alternate brands that offered better prices or colour selections.

Here they are in their original state, in need of a little bit of love

I'm pretty happy with the results.  I'm not sure that there's as much graduation of the colour in the dip dyed skirt as there should be, but it looks okay.  The packet instructions said to stir the clothes in the tub for the first 15 minutes.  I wasn't confident doing this while dip-dying so only added this skirt once the other items had been in for 15 minutes already.  I think if it had been in for the entire time it would have been a much stronger colour at the bottom.  I also raised the skirt out the water a few centimetres every five minutes and think this was too slowly according to the rate at which the fabric took the dye.  It seems like most of the dye uptake happened in the first few minutes.

 Dying in action

I'm a bit concerned about looking like a old hippy wandering round in a tie-dye skirt but have gone on a long mental journey of rationalisation and justification.  I did a bit of tie-dying as a teenager in the 90's and we're meant to be heading into a 90's revival so I could actually be ahead of the curve.  I wasn't however the most fashion forward teenager, so there's every chance that I looked like a bit of an oddball then, and I'm going to look like a bit of an oddball now.  Except for the fact teenagers look great in anything and you're expected to know better once you're past 30.  Ah well, I'll just have to subject it to the "do I dare step out of the house in it?" test.

My tie-dye prepping

One of these days I might finish an item of clothing on a day when I feel human enough, and the sun is high enough for me to feel comfortable being photographed in it.  Not today though!