Rediscovering Tie-Dyeing

Back in my teens I used to do quite a lot of tie-dyeing. I tie-dyed everything (using commercial dyes) - tote bags, silk scarfs... I even tie-dyed a dress that I had my aunt sew for me from plain white cotton (I did not have any sewing skills to speak of at the time) - oh, I loved that dress... I couldn't find any pictures of it, though (it was the early 1990s - before digital photography became accessible to everyone... when cameras were fed photographic film... and you thought twice before taking a picture...).

Now my recent experiments with plant dyes on cotton fabric are getting me back into the mood!

I dyed these two pieces of cotton cloth (each about 50 cm x 75 cm, approx. 110 g total) with a heather dye (100g heather simmered for about an hour, then strained).

The lighter coloured piece was tied right from the start and dyed in one step. The darker fabric was dyed in a two-step process - it was first dyed yellow in the same dye bath as the lighter piece of cloth. Then I tied it, added a little less than 1/2 tsp of iron(II) sulphate to the dye bath and put the fabric back in for a couple of minutes.

I'm really pleased with the result... there's a high probability of many a tie dyed project bag coming into existence in the near future...