Snow Dyeing

Over the years, I have had an on again/off again relationship with fabric dyeing. I love hand dyed fabrics but there are times when I just don't want to deal with the time involved. And when I talk about that time involvement, I've pretty much whittled it down to what I call a lazy dyer's method of fabric dyeing. I don't dye with intention--I'm not trying to duplicate exact colors, I take on the attitude of  "hmmm, I wonder what the result will look like if I add some of this color", and when it comes to the washing out of the excess dye, (which is the part I hate the most), it can take several days until my fabric isn't bleeding out any excess dye.

So my dyeing of fabrics with fiber reactive dyes goes in spurts. I'll do some pieces, add them to my stash and then I'm done for a period of time. I have always admired the results of other dyers and when I see what they are doing when dyeing it lights a fire in me to try and do that too. One of the techniques that I had been wanting to try for quite some time is snow dyeing. I live in a part of the country that does get snow. Sometimes a lot of it and sometimes a little. I live in North Dakota, in case you weren't sure. Our snow season can run about 5 to 7 months. And I can't believe I hadn't tried snow dyeing....until now.

On a date at the end of December I got together with a couple of friends, both of whom had snow dyed before, and we spent several hours dyeing several pieces of fabric.  The bulk of my results are shown in the next photo.

Most of these are just okay in my mind. If snow dyeing was going to produce only fabrics like these, I would probably not do it anymore. But check out the next piece.

Wow, I am totally in love with this one. For this one I wondered how it would turn out if I wrapped many rubber bands on sections of the fabric and then snow dyed it. I'm so glad I did that. I've been on a rubber band wrapping/snow dyeing frenzy ever since. Okay, maybe frenzy is not the right word. But I think about it a lot. I created another one with different colors:

I've got two more in the works as I type this. I'll share those results with you when they are ready. Oh, and I've got more ideas swirling around in my head. Yikes!!! Have you tried snow dyeing?