What else is snow for?

At the beginning of the month, we were 'blessed' with snow and although it wasn't much and only really kept us in for one day, I had to make good use of it by Snow Dyeing.

This is something I've done many times before, sometimes through lack of snow using ice, and each time the results have been different but that's one of the wonderful things about using this method of dyeing fabric.

I started by soaking some cotton fabric in soda to help the dye get into the fabric and then folded some and scrunched up other pieces.  This fabric was placed on a rack over a litter tray.......

Next I piled on the snow so that all the fabric was covered.....

Finally for this first stage, I sprinkled dye powder over the snow (taking care that I didn't breathe any in!).  I used a variety of fibre reactive dyes, some of which I'd had for some time and thought it time to use them up.  This may well have affected the results but as I wasn't planning to use the fabric for a particular project, I didn't worry about it.

So that the snow took time to melt and therefore spent as much time as possible on the fabric I put the tray in the shed and left it for 24 hours.   Even then there was still some unmelted snow but we were having sub zero temperatures overnight at that time.

Having rinsed and washed the fabrics, I was really pleased with the results.  some of the fabrics had some lovely areas which you only seem to get with snow dyeing, so the whole operation was a success.

 

 

 

Now I have to decide what to do with the fabric!  I have a couple of ideas mulling so more to come.....