Continuing from yesterday — After about 18 hours, my layer cake of shirt, snow, and dye looked like this:
I have seen instructions to put the textile on top of a screen so that the dye drips through. This may result in sharper patterns and more delineation among the colors, but I’m not sure.
Cold rinse. Wash out the excess dye with cold water and a squirt of blue Dawn dish soap. This can be done by hand or in the washing machine.
Hot rinse. Set the dye by laundering the rinsed textile in hot water, again with a squirt of blue Dawn. I usually throw in a bunch of old towels to make a load. Throw in a Shout Color Catcher sheet if you don’t want the added items to take on any of the remaining dye color.
Dry. Iron. Voilà. If the design is too pale or unbalanced, no problem throwing the garment back for a re-do. I’ll add this to yesterday’s instructions: this only works on cotton, linen, or other cellulostic fibers (and maybe silk). No acrylic or polyester, please.
I haven’t decided yet whether to use the shirt as the base for a boro jacket (inspired by Zoe Hong’s recent YouTube video) or as the canvas for some other surface design experimentation (paint, stamp, stencil, etc.).
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