Hi friends! 🌀 where are we getting cotton hoodies & sweatpants to tie dye? My family & I are trying to make another set like this & I cannot find cotton sweatsuit sets ANYWHERE it seems. Please help! Thank you in advance!

I thought this one turned out really pretty! It isn’t inspired by any particular kind of agate, but I was trying for some naturalish colors! I used Pewter, Palomino Gold, and Blue Gray.

This was a complete experiment off of a random idea of experimenting with irrigation dying, HWI. I figured, why couldn't I irrigate using fine mist over 40 mins and see how it does? By far one of the most beautiful shirts I've ever done.

I bought a cheap automated misting system off of Amazon, used chemwater and finely dusted the dye on in layers, pariah method then I put it in the oven on warm in a big plastic bag for boiling turkeys in.

Colors used: Electric Blue, Periwinkle, Fushia Red, Fire Red, Eggplant, Nightshade, Raven black

Today's shirts are #29/30 both XXXL Supima Cotton Blanks in my series of HWI shirts! #29 was only raven black with some attempts at new rolls/ties. Wish I got more white but we came full circle in not under penetrating but over! :') For #30 man it came out great! More UV fun more figuring out what I can mix well with it for certain colors. I love it! Lets just hope who I made it for does too!

I dyed these under the full hunter moon I was feeling a bit spooky!

Thank you for looking and reading! I always love to read anyone's thoughts on the shirt! Happy to answer questions as well you can even DM me lots do... :') I may even respond!

My journey to avoid liquid dyeing these things continues. 

I decided to get a little scientific about it to zero in on a good irrigation process for tight folds. I love the color effects I get with irrigation (see slide [2] - what I call the “juicy” effect) - but in my early testing of the method I wasn’t able to consistently get good saturation - especially for tightly-tied shirts. 

Enter my kenney irrigation experiment. I tied up four shirts and worked with two variables: temperature (165F vs 115F) and soda ash timing (immediate to dissolve the dye vs. water first, soda ash after 15mins). I mixed my soda ash 1:4 by volume with water. I sprayed my water and soda ash solution on to the shirts with regular cheap spray bottles. 

RESULTS

Irrigating with water before applying soda ash is the unequivocal winner. Temperature variation had less of an effect. Maybe this is basic knowledge for many of you - but I am new and had to find this out for myself. This backs up what I already knew about why we ice dye and liquid dye - you need water to carry the dye into tight folds before fixing it. Without that initial flow, the dye is still on the surface when the soda ash hits, and generally it stays there. More on that after my shirt-by-shirt breakdown. 

Shirt 1: Rainbow. 165F, water first. Process: dye powder -> water -> flip -> dye powder -> water. Wait 15 mins. Hot soda ash -> flip -> soda ash. 
I love this thing. Juicy and beautiful. We’re talking Gauguin colors. Makes me want to try 50 slightly different rainbows with this exact method.

Shirt 2: Moss Green/Avocado/Mushroom. 115F, water first. Same process as above, but I let my water and solution cool to around 115 before applying. More like “warm water irrigation.”
There’s a lot I like about this one, but it’s not perfect. I think my front center tie (half-assed mandala) and my color choices could have been better. I was expecting Shiitake mushroom to bloom into more shades - at this temperature, it did not. But as far as saturation and texture, I think this shows that Warm Water Irrigation is a great option.

Shirt 3: Daffodil/Bluebird/Turq. 165F, immediate soda ash. So the process was powder -> soda ash -> flip -> powder -> soda ash.
When I was pouring the soda ash, it looked like I was getting good penetration. I wasn’t. Alas for my thicker sections. 
Even though there’s a lot of white space, the parts that came out came out nicely. Something about the texture on the front gives me more of an authentic Kenney feeling than anything else in this batch. Again, more on that later. All of that said, I think this was the least successful overall. 

Shirt 4: Scarlet/Daffodil/Peach/Terracotta. 115F, immediate soda ash. Similar white space issue to shirt #3, though less extreme. White’s a color. And again, what came out came out well. 

CONCLUSION & EXTRAPOLATION

Both of the immediate soda ash shirts, while lacking something in saturation, have that deep, layered, vastly complicated characteristic that you see in Mr. Kenney’s actual work - what I call the “exoskeleton” texture. Here is my theory on why that is, and how I plan to use that knowledge to make my “successful” shirts even more righteous: 

My theory (fairly sure of this from observing this test) is that the exoskeleton texture comes from thick dye getting fixed right on the surface of the tied shirt. The dye powder/hot soda ash combo produce a thick paste that can’t really soak into the nubs. It stays on the surface, fixes there, and creates the whole image you see on the shirt. The result is a really interesting visualization of surface area vs. interior area, and a stark relief of the string. It’s quite cool. 

So - here’s how I plan to combine the strengths of both approaches to establish a no-liquid-dye full kenney method. A juicy-exoskeleton synthesis, if you will.

• Hot or warm water irrigate, water first. Apply powder dye to one side, irrigate, flip, apply and irrigate again. Stagger color placement between the two sides for more detail. 
• After 15 minutes, apply more dye powder (darker colors, probably) and immediately hit with hot soda ash solution. This will create that thick paste that fixes right on the surface. 

Alternatively I might try mixing up some thick & concentrated dark colored dye and squirting it on right before soda ash application. But that wouldn’t be a liquid-dye free method, would it? 

So what we would have (if this works) is essentially the full pariah method, except you don’t need to go through the sweaty, hardware-intensive process of measuring and blending a bunch of concentrated chem water dyes. I live in a small apartment so this is important for me. All you need is powder dye, water, soda ash solution, and one table's worth of space. You mix everything directly on the shirt. What a world!

A final note on this method vs. my previous trial of ice-dyeing kenneys. Ice dyeing gave me amazing subtle gradients and variety that didn’t show up at all in my irrigation tests. When all is said and done, I might end up preferring the ice. We shall see. 

Much love. More soon. 

Did another one of these chevron folds i’ve been trying. this one was trying to make the front and back similar to a spine i did on another shirt not too long ago. really turned out kick ass!

This shirt I left in some muck in the rain with a little sprinkle of orange and shiitake Dharma dyes came out with a really nice grey color :)

Kenney/Trip Style on an XL Bella+Canvas. Colors used were silver lining and brushed steel from Dharma, black #92 from Grateful Dyes and winter white from Pro Chem.

My kiddo wanted to be a "gross green Goosebumps mummy" and since I have been experimenting with ice dye this year I knew I had to put some of the things I've learned to the test! The body suit was originally grey and dyed with Jacquard's Procion Avocado and Lavender. I think I will buy a grey shirt for myself and do that combo again because I love the colors! The wraps were dyed with Avocado, and some Burgandy and some ground up coffee. I put it all together with stitch witchery which held up amazing!

Pants: warrior princess, 3xl T: kaleidoscope eyes, xl T: rattlesnake

Looking for some inspiration and advice on black and white or grayscale shirts.

A friend asked if I could do a black and white tie-dye for them. I have black and gray dyes but have only ever used them as accent colors.