February Snow Dyes

These are the last snow dyes that Elizabeth made from a President's Day snow storm. Mother Nature missed the chance to give us another wallop of several feet of snow by sending us 2 inches of precipitation in the form of rain and soaring temperatures the following day, melting away all the snow. 

For several years, Elizabeth has followed a group on Facebook called “Addicted to Tie Dying” (note the misspelling of dyeing in case you search for the group).  There are some amazing artists in this group who produced all sorts of designs on clothing as well as fabric.  She has been following posts for mandalas for some time now and finally decided to buckle down and try a tutorial from the “files” section of this group after being inspired by Sue’s attempts as well as some mandalas that Vicki Welsh recently dyed.  She also folded and cut out a zillion paper snowflakes with the kids at her school that week so the folding part was starting to become rote.

Beginning with some small fabric squares she first folded these two eight-point mandalas.

 Next she tried a six point one.

The last two squares she did a more traditional tie dyed circle reminiscent of many tie dye t-shirts you might see.

Being emboldened by her small experiment and with enough snow left for one more, she cut a 48” square and made this.  She thinks it would make a nice backing for a wall hanging or a whole cloth quilt for some free motion quilting practice.

And it looks like Mother Nature may provide one more opportunity for snow dyeing this winter, as snow is predicted tonight into tomorrow morning, just a couple of inches.  We'll see if its enough for more dyeing, better get the fabric soda ashed just in case!