Earthy Swirl: Raspberry, Avocado, Chocolate, and Navy

Charcoal Target

Citrus Stripes: Yellow, Orange, Red

Bright Swirl: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple

Diagonal: Blue, Red, Orange, Yellow

I Got the Blues: 3 shades of blue

Blue Targets

SECOND QUALITY: This will be thrown in as a gift with a purchase. It’s just not a very good quality diaper to start with.

Raspberry, Avocado, Camel

Blue Shibori

In June, I dyed up some fitted diapers that I bought used from a friend. I’ll be selling these back into our local cloth diaper community at our fall Cloth Diaper Garage Sale.

Then I dyed two shirts for Genna to replace the two that she outgrew before she got to wear them. The ones she outgrew were better, lol. They’re the two shirts in this post. They are on their way to be auctioned off at the Friends of Iowa Midwives fundraiser on Labor Day.

Then a friend had a tie dyeing party, and I made a few things there. I did learn that I cannot dye with friends. I am not as focused, I am sloppier, and I make a lot of mistakes. You can see the yellow spots on the sleeve of the second shirt there.

I really enjoyed making these. I had a TON of these shirts from when Wally was a baby. He really never wore them, and Genna didn’t wear them, so I didn’t want to put them back in the Newborn Clothes bin. Instead, Wally and I low water immersion dyed them (in little cups). I’ll be taking them to Oh, Baby tomorrow (Methodist Hospital, be there!) and then, if they don’t sell there, listing them at Etsy.

So. I’d read a bit about dyeing silk, and how it CAN be done with the dyes I already have - fiber-reactive dyes. But that those dyes may shift or the results might be unexpected. And I guess I didn’t read much about exactly HOW one might dye silk with the fiber-reactive dyes. I just gave it a shot. I bought four silk squares to make playsilks for Wally.

The first one, I did low-water immersion dyeing with red dye. It turned out BEAUTIFUL. I didn’t photograph it and it went missing shortly after it was washed out. (I’ve since found it. Wally was playing with it. yay.)

So, I figured, alright! This is easy! And dyed the other three. The one on the left in the picture is a nice lemon yellow, as it was supposed to be. The middle one was supposed to be purple, but is instead a kind of raspberry with streaks of green, which is alright. The one on the right was supposed to be Kelly Green. mmm hmmm.

I will PROBABLY try that Kelly Green one again, but with a different color.

Clearly, if I were going to make more (which I’m not), I really should get silk dyes.

I also batiked some more hankies. I haven’t gotten into any overly complex designs with the batik. Some day when I don’t have to batik with littles at my feet, maybe! But I’m digging these simple designs for now. I particularly like how the dye turned out on these - I tub dyed them, but I used a very small amount of water - enough to submerge the items, but barely. It made the dye kind of variegated - there are light smudges, and dark smudges, instead of just one solid color.

A few people have asked me to make some of these for sale, instead of just for myself, so here you go! Super fun, Super funky Tie Dye prefolds.

Um, this shirt looks like vomit.

So, recently, I’ve made Shibori headscarves.

I love the way they look, and I love Shibori in general. You take the fabric, wrap it around something cylindrical, tie it up, scrunch it down, and dye. You can get different results depending on how tightly you wrap the fabric, how much it overlaps, whether you fold it first and how, etc. I’ve found that even people who generally would say they don’t like tie dye say they like the way Shibori looks. And it’s So Much Fun!!

These here are all destined for Etsy. A few of them have been listed already.

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If anyone reading this has not tried tie dye, you really should. Just get yourself some RIT, even - it’s widely available and cheap. (The results won’t be as good, but if you’re just playing around for fun, who cares??)

I also dyed up a bunch of stuff for my own family.

Hoodie for Wally. He helped me dye this one and loves it.

A headscarf for me. I actually made this a while back and have been wearing it incessantly. It’s a few inches bigger than a do-rag, which gives me just enough space to tie it the way I like.

Then a new headscarf for me, in green.

Orange and Yellow outfit for Genna. It’s a little boring, though. I might applique it.

I love this shirt for Wally. We made it with the low water immersion technique. Basically, after soaking the shirt in soda ash solution (fixer), we stuff it in the bottom of a jar, pour in the two colors of dye, and add water to cover the shirt. Easy enough for a four year old. I’m going to applique something fun on the back.

Outfits for Genna for summer. I love the Sage and brown together. The shirt on the left is actually sage with raspberry.

And I love this dress. Raspberry, Sage, Chocolate. Sounds like the start of a recipe. How smart is it to have a white dress for a 6 month old? Not good, probably, but I can always overdye if I need to.

It’s not altogether bad for my first attempt at discharge paste.

Discharge paste removes dye from items once they’ve been dyed. You paint (or stamp or whatever) the paste on to your item, then let it dry. Once it’s dry, you steam it with an iron, and the heat is what takes the color out.

Now, ignore that some of the lines weren’t great to start with (I was bouncing Genna while painting!). Notice the big smeary part in the middle and near the bottom of the design. The iron wasn’t entirely hot when I started steaming my hankie and it spit water all over the place.

So, lesson learned. Make sure your iron is good and hot before using it. Especially with discharge paste.