Wicked Rural Homestead
Live Simply
Resist Tie Dye
A few weeks ago I was unmotivated to do anything but sit- rendering me voluntarily couch bound. My inability to completely veg-out resulted in my making a baby registry on the ipad. Among the items requested were plain cotton onesies, fabric dye and tuct tape. My sister bought me all three, proving that I might be weird but I am not alone.
These items arrived promptly and I started dying pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down. Since she gifted me the large set of powered dyes I experimented with using the dye in powder form on wet cloth, instead of hydrating the dye like the bottle suggested.
I wanted to try some wax resist techniques ala Pysanky eggs. My first series used actual bees’ wax from the Pysanky sets I have. I tried for some galaxy designs and used the dry powder method over them.
It is fun to watch the powder hit cloth and see how it spreads (leave me alone I’m not allowed to drink so I have found other ways to entertain myself.) I continued on to do some night-time moon and stars patterns.
After trying to get all the wax out of the fabric I was underwhelmed with the results and decided to see if there were any other resist materials that could be used. I searched the web and found some examples of using washable glue. This looked interesting! My first glue series I used regular white glue but it was too hard to get out of the final product.
I still used the dry dye method, applying it with a paint brush to get a more exact color spread.
Next, I switched to the clear “school” verity of glue and had some really nice results.
The most important aspect of using glue is to make sure the glue has ample time to set up (24 hours is recommended) before you expose it to wet dye. After all it is water-soluble.
After simple white fabric resist rounds I wanted to try laying glue over already colored cloth and then adding additional dye on top of that. I like the drip design for its simplicity and since babies are always dripping something from somewhere, I also felt the subject matter was apt.
This one also had the drips going up, so I can tell when the child is upside down. I think they came out nicely and I hope that our little PJ will appreciate being so colorful… As if she has a choice in the matter. Her big brothers made her these ones.
Be well!
Wicked Rural Homestead 
I love your experiments and out-of-the-box thinking!
Nice baby onesies 🙂
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Thank you! I have decided there is no box and the only rule is not to mix orange and green, brown is just not that pretty 🙂
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Love them all. What a productive play day you had.
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oh this took about a week. I had to be patient and wait for things to dry and set… not my strongest skill but when you rush it things don’t set right. 🙂 Be well!
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