Pastels

[steve]

Does anyone here like to tie-dye pastel colors? Personally I go for more saturated colors when I dye, but I though I might explore this area. I suspect a certain 4 year old might like that .

I do have a few pinks, baby blue, some light purples.

Do you tend to buy pastels or do you just dilute the dye more?

Steve

[pburch]

When I've created pastels, it was generally as an unintended side effect of dyeing 50% polyester 50% cotton. The results were good, though. Since my children are male, I've always had to be careful to avoid red when dyeing part-synthetics, since they did not want pink. (I dyed 50% poly screen-printed items that they had received at daycare or school and wanted to keep; my boys never wanted to wear white.)

Occasionally I want to dye pastels for a change, when dyeing for myself. Cutting the dye concentration in half did not work. I think using 1/10 as much as usual is probably about right. That's what I've been intending to try next time myself, anyway. Prochem's tie dyeing recipe agrees with this scheme: it calls for one gram of dye per cup for pale colors, 5 grams for medium, and 10 for dark, and I do usually go for the very intense colors. (Their volume equivalents are approximately 1/2 teaspoon, 2 teaspoons, and 4 teaspoons, respectively.)

I think it would be very limiting to use only premixed pastels. The easiest way to do it would be to have a few extra bottles handy when you dye other items, and add one part of dye to nine parts of water (with or without urea and/or alginate) in the extra bottles. All colors that look good bright also look good as pastels, in my opinion.

Paula

[tiedyejudy]

Does anyone here like to tie-dye pastel colors? Personally I go for more saturated colors when I dye, but I though I might explore this area. I suspect a certain 4 year old might like that .

I do have a few pinks, baby blue, some light purples.

Do you tend to buy pastels or do you just dilute the dye more?

Steve

Awhile back, I went thru a phase (before Michael's DVD) where I was heavily rinsing my tie-dye before the final wash.  I ended up with a number of pieces that came out pastel, and found that a lot of people prefer the lighter shades.  It does waste dye, but the results were consistent.  Here's a sample:
 

Judy

[steve]

I know I've asked this before--but that information is no longer with us--but how much dye powder do you use with formulated pastels? Most of the Prochem pastels are 3% owg on their chart, but some--particularly bubblegum says 1%.

Now I know that these numbers are for high water dyeing, but I'd think that they could guide what we do with direct application. I am assuming that if I usually use 1 TBS of dye, then I'd use 1 tsp for the bubblegum.

Steve

[dancingbearmama]

I use 1 T of the bubblegum and get a really nice bright pink!  That probably doesn't help you, though   I've been thinking about trying some pastels (besides the ones that I currently use boosted with other colors -- baby blue boosted w/ brilliant or turk, baby pink boosted w/bubblegum, seafoam boosted w/aqua, wist. boosted w/lav.).  It seems like most people are drawn to the really intense, vivid colors, but I think that there are some designs that would be neat with subtler tones.  What kind of yellow would you use?

I like your idea for mixing a little dye in with water, Paula!

peace,
nicole

[Jaja]

I mix everything from primaries, so I have to check the dye shade before application. I hope that this will help:

Tear some white prewashed cotton fabrics into thin strips, soak it in soda solution and let it dry. Then cut the strips into lets say 1,5 inch pieces and store in plastic bag for later use. You may use these pieces as testing strips in low water ratio techniques (I dip it in dye solution and then let dry on kitchen paper towel)

[pburch]

Someone wrote to me who had used less than an eighth of a teaspoon of red MX-5B to dye a pound of fabric, intending to get a light pink, but, because it was rayon, the fabric turned out much too dark. Meanwhile, a cotton item dyed in the same dyebath came out much too pale.

The cellulose in rayon has been manipulated so that it is more accessible to the dye than cotton is. Normally the resulting more intense colors are desirable, but not when pastels are wanted.

How much dye should we use to dye a pound of rayon to a pastel color? I haven't worked that out yet. Have any of you?

Paula

[ecilA]

I'm in the middle of a heap of pastels.  Did a little mixing experimentation on a shirt, imagine a scrunch with a grid of different layering.  It is purely for the purpose of checking effect of these layerings.

[Ginny]

Oh my goodness, I'm so glad there is a thread on this. This may sound silly, I made some dilutions last night because I'm tie dying baby onesies.. and thought the pastels would be genius. I am washing them out right now, and seriously, all the colour is rinsing off. I also had concentrated colours, and they are staying put.. Did I dilute it too greatly? Any ideas? I'm going to resist washing any more of them and keep them baking in the heat outside.. while I try to figure out if I can salvage them.
Thank you so much!

[2D4]

Hi Ginny,

How much did you dilute them?... If you haven't rinsed them you can probably just dye over
them with a stronger solution. Even though it's a pastel color (say baby blue) I still use
two tbs. per 16ozs.

Hope this helps...
Jo

[fiberartist219]

Tom and Martine's Tie Dye 101 video has some good techniques on getting pastels. I do what they do and just add water to the solution until I get it visibly lighter, and then I dye. Of course, almost all fabrics dry slightly lighter than they look when they are wet. If you can, get their DVDs at your local library, or buy them. They are worth seeing.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the amount of dye to get a pastel could be .5% OWG up to 2%. Darker colors need 5%-8%OWG.

If your colors are rinsing out too much, it makes me wonder if you used enough soda ash, or if you checked to make sure it was 100% cotton (or other dyeable plant fiber).