Tie Dye!

An awesome friend of mine has been throwing an annual tie dye party for the last several years (which I thought I had posted about other years, but I apparently not).  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with tie dye.  On one hand, I think it looks so fun, and O. really enjoys designing his shirts.  On the other hand, I like precision.  Which, you know, is pretty much the polar opposite of tie dyeing. So every year I agonize for way too long over everything, and it ends up turning out just fine.  Two things I have learned over the years, though, are to use way more dye than you think you need and that looser rubber bands = less white (shocking, huh?).

Here are our finished products from this year:

Skirt for me, tee and dress for E. (skirt and dress blanks from Dharma)

O's tees -- he's really into purple at the moment

Napkins

Tie dye obsessing was aided and and abetted by Pinterest this year.  I can barely remember life without Pinterest. Heh.  Here's my tie dye board, if you'd like to check out the inspiration and instructions for some of the folds.

Playsilks Again

One of our nephews turned three early last month, so it was time to break out the pots again and dye up a set of playsilks. As I was working on them, O. was reminiscing about his playsilk use.  "I used the blue for water and the red and yellow for fire and lava.  Those were my favorites!" He still plays with them, but he was talking about them like it was so long ago.  I was amused.

This time I used the 35x35" silks from Dharma Trading Co. and the following dyes:

Blue: Sky Blue Wilton dye
Green: Leaf Green Wilton dye
Yellow: 1 tsp. tumeric
Red: 2 packets Cherry Kool-Aid + Christmas Red Wilton dye

Playsilks

Yesterday was playsilk dyeing day.  Between the coffee, turmeric, vinegar and various types of Kool-Aid, I had a very odd smelling kitchen!  We fixed that by baking gingerbread men when O. got home from school.  :)


There are about a billion tutorials for dyeing silk already, so I won't write one up, but I used the 30x30" scarves from  Dharma Trading Co. and the following dyes:

Red: 2 packets strawberry KA, 2 packets cherry KA
Yellow: 3 packets lemonade KA, 1 tsp turmeric (I think I could've skipped the Kool-Aid altogether for this one!)
Green: for two silks, 4 packets lemon-lime KA, 1 packet arctic green apple, a dab of sky blue Wilton icing dye.  I had planned on using leaf green Wilton dye for these, but the container leaked all over and one of us must've thrown it out.  I'd have liked to have a grassier looking green.
Blue: sky blue Wilton dye
Purple: 3 packets grape KA, 1 packet strawberry.  This was my biggest dud, but it looks better now that it's rinsed out and dry.  I was going for a brighter purple.
Brown/Gold: for two silks, two five-cup pots of coffee + 1 quart of water.  This is my favorite!  It's a really pretty gold in person, a little lighter than the picture.