Fabric Dyeing

I did some fabric dyeing over the past three days, but nothing too creative. I simply (over a boiling pot of water with scalded fingers) changed the color of a few tops. In boiling water, I dipped and soaked my pre-dampened shirts in dissolved Rit dye, one cup of dissolved salt, and one tablespoon of laundry soap (according to package directions). I stirred them each for twenty minutes (package said to do it for thirty), then I hung them to dry in hopes of getting them to be darker towards the bottom (looks cool and slims the hips). To my surprise, the salt crystallized as my shirts dried. The salt then dropped off here and there as the wind blew, and the droplets of salt dyed everything it touched! I didn't realized this until later in the evening when the night air became moist and dissolved the dyed salt. By this time, I'd hung my shirts inside because they were "dry".

But wait - there's more! Before I discovered this phenomenon, I had heat set the tops in my dryer. When I opened the dryer door, the dryer walls were the same color as my shirts! A-a-a-a-a! Several cleaning, bleaching, rinsing, back aching, scrubbing hours later, the dryer walls were finally close to normal again. I ran the dryer with a damp white towel to see if it picked up anything like the previous towels had ~ nope, clean as ever.

All in all, my shirts turned out great, but I sure miss my old washing machine that didn't change color when I dyed fabric. Dying over boiling water is time consuming, exhausting, and sweaty.
Wa! Wa! Wa! Get me a tissue.