Soda Ash and paint/wood finishes?

[ecilA]

I've gone back to folding dry, then soaking. I tried the wet fold but it was too hard with gloves, too drying without --and the results were only noticably different to me when I did a 'scrunch' so I may start doing those after the soak....What are the advantages to you? I am starting to do more production and would like to decide on the steps in my process and then just repeat them but now I am doing alot of experimenting to find my 'way' of doing it

It's a matter of efficiency for me, I don't need extra steps or extra squeezing or extra waiting (for excess to drip out), especially if I'm working with a large number of pieces.

[John]

I've gone back to folding dry, then soaking. I tried the wet fold but it was too hard with gloves, too drying without --and the results were only noticably different to me when I did a 'scrunch' so I may start doing those after the soak....What are the advantages to you? I am starting to do more production and would like to decide on the steps in my process and then just repeat them but now I am doing alot of experimenting to find my 'way' of doing it

It's a matter of efficiency for me, I don't need extra steps or extra squeezing or extra waiting (for excess to drip out), especially if I'm working with a large number of pieces.

Yeah, we just did a 500 peice order and waiting for dripping would have cut our profits down to nothing...labor-wise.

When you get a large enough wholesale order they aren't interested in how you make it or the love you put into your work, they want to know how long it takes until they can turn around product. They can always go to colortone and get wholesale pseudo-dyes for $3.20 each...

[steve]

Alternatively, one could use activated dyes eliminating the soda soak altogether. It strikes me that if one is doing a large volume of tie-dyes that the issue of using up the dye before it has exhausted would be a non-issue. Michael found this to be most efficient for him, and believe me, he could crank out the tie-dye!

Steve

[ecilA]

You know, I have considered activating the dye but I don't count on not walking away from it for longer than 2 hours (I'm a mom and a dyer, my time can be very scattered).

But again, personal preference, for me it works best to work with ashed pieces.

[mysticmountainsmama]

I'm in Alice's boat. Little emergencies can pop up (or poop out) at any moment around here....Someday they'll all be potty trained
I agree that the wet fold produces crisper results and have been wetting the blanks with water, folding, tying and the refridgerating until I get to soak and dye, I think that's my 'way' to do it....best of all worlds for me.

[Anna]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I put a soda ash soaked shirt down on my cedar porch railing just for a moment and the shirt picked up the color from the wood. I rinsed it out and started over, resoaking it in ash.