Tie Dye Spirals

Now that I've returned to mostly normal I've started to dig out of my backlog of stuff. I have yards and yards of fabric to iron and post and, it turns out, lots of photos to edit and post from past dyeing sessions. Here are the first of the dyeing photos.

I'm making a lot of tie dye beach towels for my family's beach trip in May. I thought this was going to be a surprise for them but realized last week that my brother reads my blog so it won't be a surprise for everyone. I'm dyeing them all in spiral motifs. I have the most recent 3 to share today and even remembered to take a photo of the dye application so you can see how I made them. I think I still have about 8 beach towels left to dye before May.

​Most of the spirals that I dye are done with full color saturation like this one.

I'm starting to play around with keeping some white areas and that's what I did with this one. The white doesn't show as much as you would expect.

This one turned out even better than I expected. I love the bits of red outlining the black spirals. I do need to get better at taking the time to make sure my twisted fabric stays round after I soda soak it. Flat spirals aren't ideal and I think that's happening from the way I handle it after I soda soak it and before I dye it.

I saw some shirts on the Facebook Tie-Dyeing group where the spiral didn't go all the way to the edge of the shirt. I liked the effect and decided to try it on a shirt for Chris in UVA colors. Pretty cool.

​Tomorrow I may have some more dyeing results or even a couple of new things in the shop. It all depends on what I get done this afternoon before I head off to teach as Visual Arts tonight.