February Snow Dyeing Continued

Yesterday you saw Elizabeth's process for snow dyeing.  Today I'll show you what I (Sue) did yesterday.  I set up 2 batches of fabric for snow dyeing, all being previously dyed pieces that were less than interesting.  One group was mostly bluish green, while the others were pink and red.  Both pans have pieces above and below the screen.  Especially with the pinks I had a bunch of small pieces.

I tried a new set up on this pan, using a piece of screening cut from a roll and binder clips to pull it tight over the pan.  It worked well, and allows me to use a bigger pan than I was previously using with the sleeve method, which you can see in this post.

I followed my usual method of mounding the snow on top and then pouring the dye concentrate over all, like a big snow cone.  One batch got Kingfisher Blue dye, the other is Turkey Red.

It sat for about 22 hours, and this morning I started the rinsing process.  Most sources tell you to rinse the fabric until the water runs clear, and then machine wash in hot water with Synthropol soap, which helps remove the excess dye, and this is what I normally do.  However while pre-soaking these fabrics in the soda ash solution, I noticed that a lot of color still came out from the original dyeing.  So I decided to try a method that Vicki Welsh uses; since she sells her hand-dyed fabric on Etsy, I thought it might well be worth the extra time.  Vicki does a 12 hour boiling water bath before machine washing, and does not have a problem with her colors running.  So that's where my fabrics are now - soaking for 12 hours.  We'll see what the results are tomorrow!  And perhaps results from Elizabeth's dyeing as well.