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Post by MTRuth on Jul 14, 2015 20:20:28 GMT
cool - off to see your experiments
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Post by Shepherdess on Jul 15, 2015 0:01:57 GMT
Cool experiment. I wonder if you left the urea out and added the washing soda to the dish soap. Then add sop bubble and then dye bubbles like you did. I thought urea was used to help keep things wet. I don't use it in scrunch dyeing. Having the cloth hot might help too heat makes the MX dyes strike.
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Post by Teri Berry on Jul 15, 2015 8:40:35 GMT
Thanks Ann. You are correct, I added the urea to the first batch as a wetting agent in an effort to stop the fabric drying out before the dye had fixed but it also acted as a wicking agent, spreading the dye across the fabric.
Adding soda ash to the detergent solution could work too but as I couldn't get this to work on silk and the patters are too delicate to show up on more open weave cottons I'm struggling to see a use for it in my work. Perhaps one of the quilters would like to take up the mantle?
Thanks for your comment on my blog Ruth, I was thinking along similar lines about trying this in felt, obviously I'd need to use acid fast dyes but wouldn't the need heat fixing? The felt could be presoaked in acid and allowed to dry before applying the bubbles. Would you allow that to dry and then heat fix in a dry environment (eg steamed inside a zip lock bag so it stays dry)?
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Post by zed on Jul 15, 2015 10:15:39 GMT
I don't know enough about dyeing to know what would/should work or why. Or how to get the dye to fix if you don't mix the salt/soda in with the dye. You got some good results We used to make pictures by mixing washing up liquid with kids paint, blowing bubbles through a straw, then putting paper on top, simple but great resulrs!
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Post by Teri Berry on Jul 15, 2015 10:53:25 GMT
I don't profess to be any sort of dyeing expert either Zed, most of what I have learned has been through trial and error, but I do like to read and occasionally manage to remember some of what I read! Pre-treating fabric with soda ash seems to be a fairly common technique but from what I have read about Procion dyes there is an argument that mixing the dye and soda ash in the same jar makes more of the dye available to bind to the fabric. Apparently, procion dyes have a high affinity for water molecules so happily to bind to the water rather than your fabric, hence there is always so much dye left in the water and it takes ages for the water to run clear. The soda ash (presumably the higher pH) encourages the dye molecules to detatch from the water molecules, making more available to bind to your fibre. Well, that is my numpty-level understanding of fibre reactive dying anyway! What I would really like to understand (do we have any chemists on the forum?) is why you can't just add more soda ash to your bucket the next day to re-release the dye molecules and extract more dye from the solution onto another batch of fabric? I've tried it, it doesn't work (you just get a very pale version).
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Post by MTRuth on Jul 15, 2015 16:13:16 GMT
Teri - I would pre-soak the felt, let it dry and then apply your technique. Then you could either let it dry and steam it in plastic or you could cover it with very thin plastic and steam right away. I have done this with screen printed felt and it works just fine. It doesn't shift anything with the steaming. Or perhaps let it dry and then iron it.
I think there is a chemical reaction between the dye and the soda ash when it "meets". Then there is no left over dye to bond to anything because it bonded to the soda ash already. Not a chemist either but just from reading and hearing others talk about it.
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