Ice

I am using a 100% cotton shirt that has been pre-soaked in soda ash water. The color I’m using is dark brown by Dharma Trading Co.

I wanted to dye this on an incline, so I used some mega blocks to prop the metal basket up on the cookie cooling rack. Mega blocks are awesome for tie-dye because they can be stacked and used for several purposes.

It took about six hours for the ice and the dye to melt through. It all collected in the bin under the cooling rack. Trying to get flow ice results does not work well unless you have drainage for the melt to drop off.

The shirt is inside out and facing down. I laid it on top of a large piece of polyester fleece. Then I used tall, scrunchies and shove the whole thing in a snug basket.

Usually, I wear a full painters mask to make sure that I’m not breathing in any of the fine dust from the dye. The dye can float in the air for a while, and you don’t wanna be breathing that in. Also, it’s a good idea to wear gloves because touching soda ash can irritate your skin.

As you can see in this image, where I am unfolding the shirt, there’s a lot of white space remaining. If you pay attention when you’re unfolding and think about how you placed the dye, you can get a feel for how to do it differently in the future to get the saturation that you want.

When I’m ice dyeing a shirt, I usually add about the same height of ice as the height of the thing that is folded. I did not sprinkle on any extra soda ash with the ice and the dye.

I sprinkled about half a teaspoon of powdered dye over the middle section of the ice. If I could do it over again, I probably would’ve added more dye all over.

Here’s what the dark brown color looks like in the flowy ice dye style when the shirt is fully washed and dried. I love this color and will definitely use it again. I would like to try combining it with a dark color for more contrast.