I tried snow dyeing last year, with very mediocre results. This year, in the Jan 2011 issue of AQS there is a good article by Lisa White Weber and so I followed the directions when mixing the dye and soda ash. Basically she uses a heavy concentration of dye mixed with urea and the soda ash concentration is also stronger than I would normally use.
There is some suggestion that you can do this using crushed ice. Basically you put your fabric (which has been soaked in a soda ash solution) on top of a webbing which is attached to the top of a tray (I like kitty litter trays). This keeps the fabric out of the resulting liquid. Snow is put on top of the fabric to a depth of about 6" and then dye is squirted on to the snow. The snow then slowly melts into the tray, and the dye slowly leaches through the fabric.
When I did it the first time this year, the markings are lovely rounded ones. But at the retreat we left the trays outside overnight, which froze everything, but I think the dye had already started to hit the fabric. Consequently the markings are sharper. I'm not sure how many words the Inuit have for snow, but I have a feeling that if we did exactly the same process in dry snow, wet snow, freezing cold, warmer weather etc etc we would have different results.
What is fun about the whole process is that the results are so unpredictable.
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Thanks Diane. Okay, I would have a problem finding snow and I suppose ice cubes would melt quite fast also in my climate but certainly worth a bit of fun but I will wait till our winter months.
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