At grateful-dyes.com some of our most popular dye colors are our many Ice Dye Blends. Our Ice dye blends, such as our Kaleidoscope Colors, Alien Colors, Cluster Dust Ice Dyes, and Stained-Glass Colors are all designed to split into interesting color separations on fabric when used with an ice dye technique. In general, "Ice Dyeing" is a way where one dyes fabric using reactive type dye that is applied to the fabric using ice as a means to distribute that dye in different interesting ways on the fabric. I dye sample t-shirts of these colors to show how the dyes split for me when I use them. 

There are about as many different "Ice Dye" techniques as there are individual ice dyers! Every technique will cause different amounts of color splitting when using ice dye blends. Some ice dye techniques sprinkle dye powders on top of ice allowing the dye to be distributed into the fabric as the ice melts (dye powder over ice.) Some dyers put dye powder under the ice and on top of the fabric (dye powder under ice.) Some dyers dye the fabric by squirting dye solution onto fabric and then applying ice to the fabric to have the ice melt runoff cause the dye to spread. These are just some examples of the growing world of "Ice Dyeing."

As a result of the many different ways people use Ice Dye colors, some people don't achieve the color splits on their fabric that we show in our Ice Dye sample photos. As a result, I thought I'd describe the way I dye the Ice Dye samples that you see pictured on our website so that you can replicate my results.

Here is the way that I dye our Ice Dye samples to achieve the colors splits that we show in our photographs.

In general, I am a quick and fairly sloppy, imprecise dyer. I am not the slow, patient, planning dyer in my tie dye or my ice dye sample projects. I honor those fantastic fiber artists that put a lot of work into their projects, but that is not me! 

My process is very simple, fast and easy. 

All my samples are dyed on 100% cotton jersey weave t-shirts. Usually just mass produced Gildan Heavyweight shirts taken brand new and not washed first. 

I treat the shirts with our stock soda ash fixer mix of 3/4 cup soda ash fixer mixed in 1 gallon of warm water. I dip the shirts into the soda ash water (wear gloves and eye protection for safety.) I don't soak the shirts for any length of time, just dip them in the soda ash fixer water, get them wet, then take them out and wring the excess water back into the bucket so I can reuse it.

I then put the shirt on a flat surface and severely wrinkle it up as I would if dyeing a marble pattern in tie dye. Just scrunch the fabric into a flat square-ish shape maybe a quarter of the size of a laid out shirt? Scrunched flat wrinkles. I then put a couple of big thin rubber bands across the fabric just to hold it together when I move it around. I then put the shirt on my dyeing surface. 

As a dyeing surface, I use puppy pads. Puppy pads are those blue absorbent pads you buy to house train puppies on. Puppy pads can be expensive so you can use any surface you might normally dye on, cardboard or paper towels or whatever you like. 

I put my scrunched-up shirt that is wet with the soda ash water on my puppy pad and then cover it with a layer of ice. The ice I use is normally ice we buy at the corner store. Our ice bags are little barrels of Ice cubes, but I'd use any shape I had handy. I take the ice and hit it with a mallet in a bag before I apply it to the fabric, so it's a mix of some intact cubes and some crushed ice. I put a layer of ice onto the fabric to try to cover the fabric from edge to edge. I usually do not cover every inch of the fabric completely with a thick layer of ice, I have one layer of ice and I usually have some gaps in the ice layer that allow dye to fall directly through the "cracks" so that some dye falls on top of the ice cubes and crushed ice, and some dye powder falls directly onto the fabric. 

I apply dye powder to the fabric. I do not mix the dye into solution first; I just use the dye powder from the jar and sprinkle it over the ice/ t-shirt. I use a plastic spoon and scoop some dye powder onto the spoon and sprinkle the dye powder evenly over the entire shirt/ice square. I have a fairly heavy hand in my dye use and I'm a not very careful spreader of dye powder, but I've observed others with good results sprinkle lesser amounts of dye more carefully than how I apply the dye. 

After applying the dye powder, I leave the project alone in a warm room usually overnight so the ice melts and the dye flows into the fabric. 

On the samples I make for the website, this is all the dyeing I do, the next day I take the fabric to a sink to wash out the loose dye that did not fix to the fabric. I put the fabric in a sink and flood it with cold running water to wash away the loose dye. I rinse the fabric under cold water, then increase the water temperature to warm while untying the fabric to wash as much loose dye from the fabric that I can. I then wash the fabric in warm to hot water with detergent (laundry soap is fine or Dawn dishwashing soap is good for high sudsing wash,) to finish washing out the loose dye. I then dry the fabric.

This is how all our samples of Ice Dye colors are made so if you replicate our process, I would expect that you'd get similar results.

This dye process where I only dye one side of the t-shirt tends to make a shirt that has less color on it than I would normally like, but it makes for good dramatic photos of expected color splits for the website as there is more white space. When I make shirts for myself to wear, I use this exact same technique, but I dye both sides of the fabric. How I do this is I dye the one side of the fabric as described, and then when I come back the next day, I flip the fabric over and dye the other side of the fabric in exactly the same way. So, I apply dye to both back and front of the shirt. Then I rinse and wash the same way. This gives a fully dyed fabric with the same color splits, but with very little white space and a fully dyed shirt. 

Now you know how we achieve the colors splits on the ice dye samples we show on our website! Happy Dyeing!