White Letter Day

It never changes.  As soon as snow is mentioned we all go mad here in the UK.  For my part I hate the stuff if I need to get about in it but it does have its entertainment factor and I do like to take advantage of it for a little creative dyeing.

Our street looked very attractive after everyone had gone to work,

and I was happy to see the level increasing in the back garden. (photos courtesy of my DH).

Once the snow had accumulated enough I prepared some fabric by soaking it in a solution of washing soda and then layered it in a tub on top of some foil trays to stop the fabric sitting in the dye solution once the snow starts to melt.

Next step was to pop out into the garden to collect some snow.  

Thank you to my DH for catching me in my glory collecting snow off the car!  That's a mask round my face not a snowball ;-)

I usually use dye solution to trickle over the snow but I had some old powdered dyes that we bought from Craftynotions many years ago so I thought I'd experiment with them for a change.  The only problem is they were made in Hungary and the instructions are therefore in the language of that country.  The only thing I could be any where sure of was the colours!   Anyway, I've sprinkled lemon, cold red and terracotta on one tub and blue, turquoise and lilac on the other.

They are currently sitting in my sewing room thawing fairly rapidly and I will shortly lift out the fabric and wrap it in plastic until tomorrow when I will rinse it all out.  So far the blue has melted quicker than the red shades and the colours look strong but time will tell.

I'll hopefully post some photos of the results tomorrow.  If you click on the tag 'snow dyeing' you should be able to read earlier posts about my processes.  In case you don't have snow you can get similar effects, sometimes better effects, with low immersion dyeing and parfait dyeing.  But I think snow is fun!  Just remember to wear marigolds, they help keep some of the cold off.