community of dyers

I dyed using PRO Midnight Blue and PRO Strongest Red and did gradations using fat quarters. All went well. Thinking that the leftover liquid might still have enough dye in it, I later put in new fabric; let it sit without soda ash for 24 hours; since it seemed to yield pale colours, I then added some other leftover dye solution, added the soda ash some minutes later, let it be for 24 hours, rinsed and looked at some intense, deep, dark colours. I thought all went well. As I now took it out of the washer, turns out that the colour from the first application is completely absent!

Is this due to the fact that I did not add the requisite soda ash until much later, near the time I added the 2nd colour?

After a week of practicing lwi, I am back with a question. I prepared a solution using yellow and a touch of black; I chose a black that goes to green. Used in the light-medium strength, I obtained the green I wanted; when used a tad darker, though, I got colors that split and basically look like army fatigues with some reddish splotches/areas. Why does the black show itself separately rather than just give me a darker shade of the green? I know there are endless variables at play but, in general, can you figure out why this happens [to me]? Thank you so much.

Using 3t of blue plus 1t of black, I dyed by lwi 5 different pieces of cotton sateen. This fabric, when purchased, had been treated but I have scoured it a few times. In any event, is this amount of dye not enough to yield dark colour? I was supposed to get a more pronounced gradation, or so I thought, but it goes from light to medium blue; the two pieces to which I gave the most dye seem to have suffered from some color separation -the black, I take it?-. Is this amount of dye not enough to yield a dark, intense colour or is the pretreated, though scoured, fabric messing with me? Thanks,

Fulvia

I am following Paula's LWI's instructions; my house, however, is at 65 degrees Fahrenheit maximum. Should I microwave to raise the temperature or not? The fabric has been batching for hours already; is it too late?
Many thanks,
Fulvia
www.fulviastudio.com

These are some bamboo rayon socks that I dyed with low water immersion using Remazol and Procion MX dyes. The socks on the left contain Remazol dye, mixtures of ProChem's liquid reactive mixing red, intense blue, and a little turquoise, while the socks on the right contain Procion type violet MX-2R (the dye commonly misnamed as violet MX-G), rubine MX-B (Grateful Dye's #14 Cherry), and orange MX-2R.

These are my favorite socks for dyeing at this time, the bamboo rayon socks

Hi, I'm brand new here. I've only done a couple of single dye simple projects with Dylon dyes in the past. I'm really intrigued by the LWI process (and pictures of the results!) Since I already have some Dylon permanent fabric dye packets left, I was wondering if I could use those for a single color LWI project on a babywearing wrap (that is already dyed pink)? I would appreciate any comments, pros/cons of doing so. Thank you!

I am new here and looking forward to getting to know all of you. The amount of information to wade through in the forum is staggering so I know it will take a while.

In the meantime, I have a quick question about Paula's page on LWI. After reading through the page, I understand that urea is not used but I am not sure if the fabric stuffed into the container is wet or dry.

Also, while doing some reading on the Web (and a brain fart leaves me wondering exactly where) I read about a dyer that treats the fabric with Soda Ash BEFORE the dyeing whereas I thought the Soda Ash was always added after the dyeing as a fixative. Why would you add the Soda Ash at the beginning? Does it help the color to disperse more evenly?

Hi. I've been experimenting with MX dyes on cotton and silk, in the past I've have only used acid dyes on wool and silk, so the MX was an interesting education! I followed Paulas instructions on low water immersion technique, plus her suggestions on using less soda ash, as I didn't want to spoil the silk fabric, (or make a hot water bath using acid.) I am thrilled with the results, and it was a lot easier than I expected. I've posted my pics on Flickr

I have been doing large batches (6-8 pieces) of LWI recently, and it occurred to me that I might need to adjust the quantity of soda ash solution I add to the batch. Is there a limit to how many items a cup of soda ash solution will handle? If so, how do I determine the right quantity of liquid to add? Currently, I am using 1 tsp of soda ash per cup of dye water, plus 1 for the liquid I dissolve it in.

Judy

I was wondering if there is a guide to the amount of liquid used in LWI dyeing based on weight of goods?

I'm dyeing knitting yarn & am pretty comfortable with acid dyeing but haven't had much experience with the fiber reactive dyes yet.

When I LWI dye with wool I use around 300ml of liquid to 50g of yarn but that seems to be way too much liquid for the cotton yarn as I'm getting fairly even colour throughout.

Thanks
Katie

Last week we were astonished to get a birth announcement from good friends who live in another city. This little rainbow of snap-crotch baby shirts is what we're sending them:

All were dyed with Vinyl Sulfone Fiber Reactive Dyes, also known as Remazol dyes; the brand I was using was Jacquard Red Label Silk Colors. The baby shirts are 100% cotton and not marked as stain resistant (I always have to check, now!). Three were dyed with low water immersion in one-cup containers, and the other thrown into larger LWI dyebaths. I rubber-banded the latter two, so they are tie-dyed as well as low water immersion dyed. I used hot tap water for dyeing, with trisodium phosphate instead of soda ash, and left the dyebaths for about three hours. The smaller cups looked likely to cool quickly, so I rested them in a pan containing several inches of hot tap water.

Left to right:

I intended to dye a kids camisole dark fuschia and light pink. Somehow I used the wrong container and instead of the colors mixing gradually with 'scrunched' areas they mixed too well and the whole top is pretty much neon pink. Should I squish it back up tightly and overdye it? With a light or dark color? Should I attempt to discharge some of the pink instead?
I was making it as a gift for the little girl next door so I'd rather not toss the whole thing, but as it is the extremely subtle gradients look like salty sweat stains :-)

Do you gurus have any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello all!
I've been playing with tie-dye and tried a low water immersion project a couple days ago. I poured yellow into the container, stuffed a onesie in and then poured blue over the top. After ten minutes I poured in the soda ash mixture. I'm happy with the color results but can't figure out what caused the odd spots on the lower left and front collar.
Could something have gone wonky when I added the fixer? Otherwise I really love the result.

[IMG]http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t139/zapkellie/DSCN1074.jpg[/IMG]

Here are three more things I dyed with low water immersion using Remazol dyes. The first came out well, the other two are disappointing to me. I will have to do some tests comparing different pH levels, amounts of salt, and temperatures for different Remazol dyes. These three garments are just an attempt to get more of a feeling for how the different dye colors behave.

The first one I think really turned out well. It gives a sparkling night sky effect. I used Jacquard Red Label Royal Blue and Jacquard Red Label Digital. Digital is a funny name for a dye; the

This piece I dyed with low water immersion using two ProChem Liquid Reactive Remazol dyes. Since ProChem's Liquid Reactive Dyes line does not include a purple dye, I wanted to see what a mixed purple might look like....

Here's a cotton shirt dyed with Jacquard Red Label dyes, yellow and apricot, by low water immersion. First a detail:
For a total of one liter of hot tap water, I used 1/3 cup soda ash (80 ml) and

Paula,
Would you please explain the difference in how dye (procion MX) strikes (or is absorbed by) a piece of fabric that has been pre soaked with soda ash and how dye strikes a wet piece of fabric with SA added later. I know the results are different with the two different methods, but I cannot remember why exactly.
I would also like your permission to share this with the new dyer who is asking the question.
Thanks,
Barbara

Paula, you seem to have tried everything so I'm asking....What happens when you use LWI on a traditional tie-dye spiral pattern? Does anyone have any examples out there? I'm curious about the effects. Should I bother doing this or will I be unhappy with the results?

thanks,
Lauren

How would I adapt the low-immersion MX dying with acid dying with kool-aid? Would I just nuke it in the microwave for X amount of time or intervels?

Thanks!

Do any of you have absolute favorite color combinations for LWI? I'm interested to hear what you have tried and really liked.

Thanks in advance,
Lauren