Thursday, July 26, 2007

Parfait Dyeing and Paper Towels Too

Here are the results from my dyeing playday last week.

This top picture is of the washed fabric that I dyed in the "parfait" fashion. I am happy with how they came out, though next time might use more concentrated dye to get darker colors. This one, believe it or not, is a dyed paper towel! It really looks like fabric. I will use it for mixed media art pieces. The fun thing about paper towels is that they can be sewn like fabric, but also torn, decoupaged, etc and used like paper too.

Another paper towel. This one was wet when I hung it to dry, so the dye started to gravitate down--I like the effect.
Stripey paper towel.
Donna B. mentioned the idea of "wicking" a paper towel roll, so I had to try it! I set a roll of paper towels in a plasic bin, and kept adding a little bit of dye in the bottom of the bin, and let it soak in. It only wicked about 1/4 of the way, so I turned it on its other end, and repeated the process with a different color. Again, it only soaked up about 1/4 of the way, so I cheated and poured the third color directly to the middle of the roll. I let it "soak" overnight, and then unrolled the paper towels on a sheet of plastic to dry outside. This is what they looked like as they came off the roll. So now I have a lifetime supply of orange, blue purple, and magenta paper towels! I want to try it again with some different colors.

3 comments:

Donna said...

I've been seeing a fair bit of dyed paper toweling on line these days. May have to give it a try "some day" :-)Like the wicking a lot....

Carol said...

Fab fab fab work when you say paper towel, is it a kitchen paper type thing? Lovely can't wait to see what you do.

Unknown said...

Is 'parfait' dyeing the same as scrunch dyeing? These and your pins are lovely - do you swap pins for postcards?