In Search of the Perfect White Cotton Shirt

Every spring I scour the local stores (all 2 of them) and look for the perfect white cotton shirts to tie dye. I learned to tie dye in the 70's at camp when dyes consisted of Rit dye on the campfire and bullseye patterns. I hated how fast that dye would fade.

In the early 80's I spent a lot time at Grateful Dead concerts where I saw the art of the tie dye perfected. One of the best sales pitches I heard was at a show at Chicago's UIC Pavillion. The vendor was hawking his wears chanting "Got to have a tie dye. Everybody's gotta have a tie dye." He had some of the worst shirts I had ever seen, but I was still temped to buy one because of the sales pitch. Once my mother told me my sister was lucky to have me around since my she was too young to remember the 60's. But I digress.

I had some leftover dye from a recent batch of fabric dying. Here is the result of last nights experiment (and it looks even better on). This is a low water immersion dying technique using turquoise and dark brown. Dark brown dye contains a deep red in mix and this shirt has wonderful color variations in it.

I will be adding my hand dyed cotton quilting fabric to my Etsy Store in June. Stop back to see a sneak preview coming soon in another blog.