Ok, this isn't weaving, but I usually dye my yarn for weaving so when my niece asked if we could tie dye I said sure, let's give it a try. I looked thru my natural dye extracts and figured out what would make good contrasts....logwood, osage orange and quebracho red was at hand.
The cotton t shirts weighed out at about 180 grams so I soaked them in 20 grams of alum acetate. It was brought up to heat to 180 and held at that heat for an hour. I turned off the heat and let the shirts sit in the mordant for about 6 hours. Not my ideal cure time but hey, these are teenagers. We then ran the shirts thru the spin cycle and the girls went to work with twirling and rubber bands. Here is where they go their tie dye instructions.
While I was mixing the dyes we tested them on a paper towel. We pushed the logwood purple to MORE purple by adding baking soda. We pushed the quebracho red to MORE red by adding some cochinael. The girls went to work with their liquids. Probably they could have gotten by with just a little dye solution but enthusiasm took the day.
We allowed the shirts to cure in plastic tubs for two days in the sun. We flipped them to allow for some of the excess dye. You can see the shirts before we washed them and they had much cleaner lines. I did put it thru 2 washes with soap to ensure they could launder them in the future. The good news is that the color struck (remember I haven't done this before) and we had two happy campers for the weekend. The bad news is that I was so into problem solving on this that I did not make myself a shirt!
