Rowan and I made our first attempt at snow dyeing last weekend. It was less than successful.
What is snow dyeing, you ask? It's a method of randomly applying color to fabric using snow. Crystal clear, right? I first read about this technique a few years ago in Quilting Arts magazine, but I couldn't be bothered to find the article, so I went by memory.
Okay, okay, here's what we did. First I tore a yard of 60" wide cotton canvas fabric in half to give me 30" x 36" pieces. No real reason, I just wanted two pieces. Then I wet them with plain water and wrung them out. Next, I arranged them in loose folds in one tray from my worm composting bin - the only thing I had with holes in the bottom.
Rowan and I then took the tray outside and piled snow about 3 inches deep to completely cover the fabric. Of course, we did this without gloves, so even at 34 degrees above zero, we froze our hands. I didn't have any fabric dye handy, but I did have a selection of Pebeo Setacolor fabric paints. Rowan chose ultramarine blue and purple for this experiment. We diluted a tablespoon or two in a cup of water (different jar for each color) and poured the paint/water over the snow. We didn't get quite the coverage I wanted, but I wasn't willing to use more of my precious, irreplaceable (yeah, right!) supplies on an experiment.
We thought it might be warm enough outside for the snow to melt, but after 12 hours I got impatient and brought the tray into the boiler room to melt more quickly. (Yes, I remembered to put a catch basin under it so there wasn't water everywhere.)
I did look online to see how others were doing this technique. One site (sorry, I don't remember which) noted that becasue the fabric paints she was using were intended to be used at room temperature, she was getting more intense colors by mixing the dye with snow. I was hopeful.
My hope ran out after seeing the final result. I suspect the poor color distribution was partly due to using paint instead of dye, and partly to simply not enough color. I did think it was interesting that I can only see purple on the fabric and no blue at all. Ah, well, we'll try again soon. I'll let you know how it goes.
