Painting with Fabric Dye by Rachel Crawford
This was a labor of love, because I was experimenting with new techniques. I wanted to try and see if I could “watercolor” with RIT fabric dye. I’m pretty happy with how it came out, and I will definitely be playing with this again.
I first sketched out my design on the Camellia bodice and embroidered the outline in black. After a few tests with the dye and decided to I keep my fabric dry so the colours were vibrant and did not bleed as much. I used a wet paintbrush to add the dye to where I wanted. After finishing, I let the whole thing dry for a couple hours. Then I rinsed it in hot water in my kitchen sink to try and get as much bleed out of it as I could before putting it in my washing machine. I also used the RIT dye fixative when I washed it.
Moving on to the skirt, I got the skirt fabric wet, then used a large watercolor paintbrush to paint the dye on (blending some colors together where they touched). I rinsed it in hot water right away, because I really wanted a more pastel look on the skirt. Then I washed it in the machine as directed on the back of the RIT dye containers.
