Irrigation Tie Dye: How Dye Moves Through Fabric, Soda Ash and Water Temperature
HiChroma: Tie Dye Demystified, Episode 2. Irrigation means putting dye and soda ash on top of a tied piece and pushing it through with a little sprayed water. Brent explains where his irrigation came from (ice dyeing, then John K's One Hour Tie Dye forum), why ice dyeing, irrigation, liquid and immersion are just different ways of delivering dye, what splits are, and why moisture without dye in it is the enemy. Then he runs four live experiments on Ron Star folds with a single color: no soda ash, soda ash added late, soda ash and dye mixed 2 to 1, and hot water with high soda ash. He covers reading the piece from underneath on a cooling rack, working sections in order, directional spray, the apex, when to commit, curing with a boil batch, and the reveal of all four shirts.
What irrigation tie dye is (0:00)
Today's episode is about irrigation. It's one of my favorite topics, and I've spent a ton of time doing it. It's incredibly joyful, incredibly organic, incredibly active. We talked about fiber, liquid, activation, and batching or curing. Today we're going to take those practices and start to really understand them. You're going to start to understand how dye moves through fabric and what effect temperature has on it. It's another variable, and you're going to see it all today.
From ice dyeing to hot water irrigation (0:29)
When I started tie dyeing, I did those couple of shirts you saw in the first episode with liquid, and then I started ice dyeing. I loved the splits and the ease of it. You could just put it in a bucket, throw some ice on it, throw some dye on it, and a couple days later you saw some magic. I really had no idea what I was doing. I was dumping all kinds of dye on there, all kinds of ice, soda ash. I didn't know when or how much. Then I would wait for days and days and days. I didn't understand how to read the fiber on the bottom side to know if it was done.
Right around that time I found a guy by the name of John Kobrzycki. I call him John K, because none of us really know how to say his last name. John K was posting these shirts and they looked different. They didn't look like liquid. They didn't look like ice. I was like, there's something different about this. He mentioned he had a group called the One Hour Tie Dye, so I found it on Facebook and went in there, and he was playing open kimono, basically: here's what I do, here are my ratios, here's how I do it. A lot of the other folds you'll see later in the series are based on what I learned there.
So I tried it out, and it was very foreign. Think about taking an item, mixing dye and soda ash together, putting it on top, and then spraying the heck out of it with 150 degree water. I was like, this is wild. But as I got into it I really started to enjoy it, because the hot water creates really interesting effects, like on this shirt here, where you get color all around and the sinew lines are completely white. I got really addicted to that effect. I wanted color everywhere and absolute white lines everywhere. What you're going to learn is that those are very different things that don't naturally occur together.
Here's an early version of one of Justin Biffer's shirts that was gifted to me by one of my friends. Justin actually started doing hot water irrigation from this forum as well.
What you'll learn: cold water and hot water irrigation (2:26)
So what we're going to talk about is irrigation. This shirt right here is some of my later irrigation work, just to show you how far you can push it. There's a lot going on. You see crazy colors on the lines, you see black in here, you see other colors. Once I teach you how to do this, it opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Today is going to be an experimentation day. We're going to do this live. I haven't actually picked the color yet. I'm going to figure that out when we walk over there, and we're going to do a bunch of shirts. This is an incredibly fun way to tie dye, and I highly recommend it. Hopefully by the time we're done, you can tie dye in your sink, your bathroom, your garage, wherever you need, as long as you have a little space. It's super easy and super fun. We're going to show you the extremes today, cold water and hot water, and then I'm going to walk you through my theory on it and how I approach it, so you can create really interesting things and use temperature as a control and as a variable.
Ice dyeing, irrigation, liquid and immersion are delivery methods (3:31)
Well, we're just about set up to run our experiments. Before we get started, I want to explain a couple of concepts. There are different kinds of dyeing. There's ice dyeing, there's irrigation, which we're going to show you, there's liquid dyeing, there's immersion. People think those are all different forms of tie dye, and they're actually not. What they are is different forms of delivering the dye. The fiber doesn't necessarily care how the dye got in there, whether it was liquid or ice dyeing or irrigation. It's just the form of delivery.
What dye splits are and why they happen (3:59)
I want to talk about splits. Splits are where a single color starts showing you the different components it's made of. It's beautiful. We'll start to tie this together with activation and soda ash. Take a black, for instance. It's made of a bunch of different colors, really every color. In that dye, the molecules of those different colors are still there, and they have different affinities and different masses. So when they're allowed to just flow through the fabric, they separate at different rates and settle in the fiber differently. That's what causes the splits.
We're going to run a crazy experiment today. I have a dye here, ProChem Aster. I think it's a special order, and I chose it for a couple of reasons. One, I've struggled with this color before. Two, it's a special order. And three, I just had a bunch of it. So we'll see how it goes. Again, this is a live studio. I don't know how this is going to go. I've never actually run all of these experiments at once, let alone with this color. But I think it'll show us exactly what's going on. So we are going to have failures today, and that's part of it.
Irrigation tie dye equipment: any cheap pump sprayer (5:08)
Equipment wise, I just want to walk you through it. It's very, very simple. There's nothing in here that's complicated. I have a sprayer here. This is a Milwaukee sprayer, and it's been more trouble than it's worth. I would never do it again, and you'll see why, because my style of doing this has changed a lot. You can use any standard pump sprayer, a $5 pump sprayer. Heck, you could do it with a spray bottle. So don't overthink it. All you're doing is adding water on top.
How to mix soda ash and dye 2 to 1 for irrigation (5:43)
We talked about how we apply the soda ash, the activation, either with the dye or after the dye's in the garment. Today we're going to mix the soda ash and the dye together, and we're going to hold that as a constant. We'll talk about some of the other theories out there, but that's going to be a constant. I'm going to mix up a big batch in this tin over here, and then we're going to sprinkle it on and show you how it moves as the water hits it. We're going to control those variables, and you'll get to see it live.
This is just a tin. You can use a baggie, anything you have. This is a quarter cup, which is four tablespoons, and I'm going to do two of these. There's really nothing to it. This is just straight soda ash, and I add it in here. Then we add the dye: four tablespoons of ProChem Aster. It's a pretty cool dye, but it's really tough to work with, if I remember right. There's lots of blues and reds in there, so it'll give us a lot of separation. Historically it's been a pain for me to work with, so why not do an experiment with it and see what happens? One, two, three, four.
So now in here we have our soda ash and our dye, and the most exciting part is the shake. I do recommend wearing a respirator. Dye is not great for your lungs. Soda ash is not great for your lungs. Protect yourself. Now we essentially have soda ash and dye in a 2 to 1 ratio, and that's our control for the dye.
Why moisture without dye is the enemy in irrigation tie dye (7:44)
Now we need water. You'll see different techniques, but moisture is your enemy. To be more particular, moisture without dye in it is your enemy. We want to make sure any moisture that gets into this item has dye in it. If it doesn't, it's going to fill the space that's left in there, and it won't let us get dye into the white. So we're very careful, cautious and conservative with the amount of liquid. We want to use the minimum amount of liquid required to get dye into the garment.
Water temperature and the Ron Star fold (8:18)
For our first experiment, this is just a thermometer. You can get them on Amazon very cheaply. I use it because water temperature is a setting, a variable we can control, so we measure it just to know where it's at. This pitcher is at 98 degrees. This is not 150 degrees. This is not ice dye water. You just add it to your sprayer. This is well water, no additives, nothing. That was maybe two liters in there. I'm going to remove this other one because we don't want to get any moisture on it.
All of these are Ron Stars. This is one of my favorite designs. It's really complex and has lots of different layers. For ice dyeing it's gorgeous, and for irrigation it's gorgeous. This is a very simple folded over star, only using sinew. There's still a lot of play in them, a lot of loose fiber. I actually don't do them like this most of the time, but I think the loose fiber is going to really show you what happens when it gets wet and how dye travels through it. Each one of these is a Ron Star. The control isn't perfect, there are some different sizes in here, but for the most part they're all based on this design, and we'll see how each one responds. It's a fantastic design. I love it. That's what this shirt is, and we'll show you how that goes.
Experiment 1: irrigation tie dye without soda ash (9:47)
So I'm going to take one of them out, and because we're doing this first one without soda ash, I'm just going to take raw dye and sprinkle it on here. Very similar to putting dye under ice in ice dyeing, with one caveat: there's no soda ash in here. And this is a lot of dye. It's amazing how little dye is actually required to dye something. You'll see this disappear very quickly. There's probably well over a tablespoon, maybe two tablespoons of dye on there, and that's plenty to do this shirt.
With this technique, I'm not going to overthink it. I'm going to spray it and see what happens when there's no soda ash. I'm going to turn this down, it's too much water. I tend to run mine on the lowest setting, because I really don't want a lot of water in there. Let the air out, and we're going to give it a pass. You're going to see really interesting things happen. You see the water kind of sit there, and then it disappears.
Here's an interesting point. What you're seeing right here is the dye starting to leave the surface of the garment and go in. It's clearing off the surface and flying through that fiber right now, and you start to see the hues of purple. That's nice and wet. I'm just going to keep working it down, and you'll see it does not take a lot of water to move this dye through. That's what's beautiful about this.
I'm doing this in a bin on a table. Normally I do these in the sink, but it shows you how portable it is. You really don't need a lot. You're not making a ton of mess, because you're not blasting it with water. This is intricate stuff, and you can really watch it, so you can become part of the process, which is why I like it so much. I feel like a lot of me goes into each one of these, because I spend so much time on them. I feel like I have a relationship with them.
So I'm going to finish this off and get that dye off the surface. We'll pick it up. You can see the dye on top is really coming out, and you're starting to see a very light color. I'll turn it over. That shows you it almost made it entirely through with just that little bit of water. It's very similar to what ice dyeing does. Very slow. If I let it sit here even longer, gravity would do its thing and push it all the way through. You can see this one's still very strong in places and very light in others, and you start to see those color splits. You've got some purples here, some light blues. That's the dye settling and falling through the fiber at different rates. I'm going to turn it back over and give it a little more, because I want to push it all the way through the core.
Using a cooling rack to read the back of the tie dye (13:34)
That's another fun thing. You need to be careful when you pick it up, because you don't want to set it back down in the dye, but you can pick it up, look at it, inspect it. Another really good way, if you don't want to touch it, is these racks. This is nothing other than a cooling rack, and it lets you pick it up without moving it and look at the bottom. That really helps. If you think about ice dyeing, you're sitting there with no idea what's going on until all the ice is melted. Here you can correct consistently all the way through the process, depending on what you're seeing and reading.
This right here was the holy cow moment for me, back when I had soda ash in. For those of you who ice dye or liquid dye, you know these are a pain to dye because they're so thick. There are so many layers of fiber.
So we've still got a little bit on the bottom to do. I'm going to push a little more water to finish that off, and that's it for this one. We're going to let it sit and cure it like this, so you can see what happens with no soda ash, how much dye sticks and how much doesn't. You can see the dye keeps moving off the surface, so it'll get light. I'd say it's more stained than anything right now, and I suspect almost all of this is going to come off in batching. We're going to stop there.
Experiment 2: adding soda ash late (14:49)
For the next experiment we're going to keep as much control as we can. The only thing we're changing is the introduction of soda ash, and we're not going to introduce it like normal. I'm going to do what I did before, put dye with no soda ash on it, let it settle until I think it's gotten to the core, then introduce soda ash, and we'll compare that to what happened without soda ash.
So here we go, item number two. Large Tultex. Same thing, we're just adding dye, no soda ash, straight up. The first one was about a tablespoon, maybe a little less, and we've got maybe a little over two tablespoons on this one. We're going a little heavier than last time, but the control will work. You'll see the science.
Very similar to before, I'm going to check the temperature just so we can document what we're doing. The last one I believe was 98. This one is at 92, so we're going to be okay with that. Clearly, as you let your water sit, the temperature comes down. That's also part of the magic. It changes as you go.
So with this one we're going to do something very similar, just give it straight water, no soda ash, and let it do its thing. I generally don't like to see pooling on the top, because I don't want to force it. I want it to do its thing. When there's no soda ash with the dye, it acts very differently. You see it creates almost a muddy, clay kind of effect. Gooey. On this one I put the dye on a little heavier, so it's a little harder to dissolve and it creates a kind of paste.
I'm just reading it. It'll tell you what it wants and what it doesn't want. That's what's so fun about it. You're part of the process. You can control it, you can drive it. But notice I'm not using a high powered spray. I'm putting on as little water as I can, because I don't want to blow the dye off the surface. I don't want to push it. I just want the water to do its thing. Gravity helps a lot with this, same as with ice dyeing. I'm just working these last pieces to get that little bit of dye off the top.
And I'm going to stop right there. I want to see what the bottom looks like. We'll pick it up. Very similar to the last one, it's really starting to move through, but it hasn't made it all the way. There's no soda ash, so that dye is really aggressively moving through this garment.
Soda ash is the brakes (17:51)
What we talked about in the first episode was the impact of soda ash. That's your activation. In this case, it's the brakes. What I mean by brakes: we talked about how when you introduce soda ash, it locks what's in place when you put it in there. With this form of tie dyeing that's true for the most part, although the temperature is lower than what we'd see with hot or warm soda ash, and we know it's a thermal reaction. So there will still be a little bit of movement, and that's okay. That's part of the beauty of this art form and this approach.
So right now I'm going to give it a sprinkle of soda ash. What we're trying to understand is what happens when you put the soda ash on. Does it lock it? Does it do what we think it's supposed to do? Don't overthink it. If you put too much on, it'll clump up. Just read it. It'll tell you what it wants to do. At this point it's very similar to what the Pariah Method would do, introducing it after. I'm introducing it with just water, which dissolves the soda ash, and that should start allowing the dye to form that covalent bond.
What I'm seeing right now is that on the previous item, you started to see this wash out. It started to get more white. Now that I've added the soda ash, it's allowing the dye that's sitting there to lock in, so it should stop moving. There's still dye in the center that is very low pH, and it's probably moving very aggressively. Eventually the water I'm introducing, which has soda ash in it, is going to catch up with that on the inside, and it's going to start locking and locking and locking.
So again, you can't really do too much soda ash. The only thing too much soda ash does is clump and bind on the fiber at the surface. That will happen, and you don't want it to happen. It won't create the effect you want. The other thing with this technique is that there's definitely a front and a back. Don't forget about the back side, because you're spraying from one side, and it does make a difference.
So I'm going to give it one more dose of soda ash and push the soda ash through. And that's it for this one. We're going to see what happens. Because I'm a little OCD, I'm going to give it a little more soda ash on the outside, because why not? It's not going to hurt. One more sprinkle, and maybe a little on the bottom. And that is just gorgeous. You see how it turned from the other one? Different results just by the introduction of soda ash. I'm going to leave this one alone right here. This is our control number two, late introduction of soda ash. As you can tell, this is going to be a good one.
Experiment 3: soda ash and dye together (21:03)
All right, that's the end of this one. We're moving on to our third experiment, and I'm going to keep things as constant as I can. I'm going to clean this rack up, because I don't want contamination. This one here is another Tultex 290, and we're doing this one with the mix. So we did one without soda ash, we introduced soda ash late, and now we're going to put the 2 to 1 ratio straight on the shirt. Very similar to before, we sprinkle it with the mixture and spray it down with the 94 degree water. We're giving everything a light coating, and now we start spraying.
How to work irrigation sections in order (21:51)
You can spray these a couple of different ways. You can just spray the whole thing. But what I found with soda ash is that it starts working, starts blocking and slows things down. I used to spray the entire thing and then come back over the areas that needed extra help. Now I tend to work them more sequentially. I'll do the front section, read it, understand where it's at, and move on. Once I get the dye flowing, I want to take advantage of that, because eventually it's going to slow down and lock up as the soda ash settles in and those bonds start to cure a little, even at this temperature.
So you'll see I won't cover the whole thing this time. I'll start at the tip. These Ron Stars are really tight, and these tip sections are really difficult. It's going to tell me what it wants to do. I don't want to just pound it with water. I want to give it just enough water that it starts moving and taking it.
This is a critical point right here. If you look at what I just did, I did the tip and gave it a couple of squirts of water, and now you're starting to see exposed fiber. Not necessarily a bad thing, but because of the temperature there's still going to be movement. If you want that outer layer to be HiChroma, make sure you've got dye covering exposed fiber, especially early on.
The other thing with this style is you want splits. You want separation. And temperature is so powerful as a control that you can overpower it. You can actually push almost pure color through these, which is just bizarre and wild. When you think about what we do with ice dyeing and other forms, this allows you to do things you can't do with those styles, because now you can control the temperature variable. Incredibly powerful, and once you get good at it you can do some really interesting things.
So I'm going to assume those first couple of top sections are done. I'm going to pick it up and peek at it real quick, because I can. Why wouldn't you? You really need to see what's going on here. You're getting pretty good color on the tip section, because we've been working it. I'm going to stop right about here because I want the splits. I want that color separation. That's where your style, your interpretation of what's going on, comes in. It lets you be actively part of the process.
Directional spray on a thick fold (24:22)
Ron Stars are really, really thick. There's a lot of fiber in here. You're basically taking an eight point and folding it over itself. It's a lot of fabric. We talked about it earlier, and you can already see it happening: directional spray matters. If you look at this section right here, I'm spraying it from the side. On this back side over here you can see it's over spraying it. So eventually I'll turn it around to make sure I push water from the other direction as well. In this case I can already see that back side isn't going evenly, so I'm going to turn it around and get the back side with some water.
Here's a pro tip. Because you're pushing water through, there's a chance the thermal variable isn't holding on tight enough, and you could potentially lower the pH in there. So a safety move I use most of the time is to give it a little bit of soda ash. As you learn this system, you'll see soda ash is an incredible variable. You can do high soda ash loads, and we'll do some of those later, and low soda ash loads. Each one has an effect working with the other variables, particularly temperature, and how the dye moves and bonds.
And just continue on down. Now I've started working the next section, the next petal. I'm a little worried given the water, so I'm going to give this little guy next to it a little soda ash just in case, because he's going to keep getting wet and I don't want the pH to drop. And I'm going to give this guy a little dye, because I know how thick these sections are. The purples are getting great. This is going to be exciting. I haven't used this color in a long time, and I struggled with it the last couple of times, so I'm really excited to see what this looks like.
Okay, so that one is also clear. There's pretty much no dye on top of this one right now, so I'm going to add soda ash just to make sure. But I'm going to pick it up and see what's happening on the bottom, because we haven't seen it. Oh, this is going to be great. You can see these top sections we finished. You can still see some color variation. You know when you're done. If I stopped right now, of course I'd get white, and I can tell that by looking at it.
The other interesting thing is that you can push it too far. I talked about opaque or solid color, and you can start seeing elements of it here. You want to stop in that perfect spot where you've got splits going on and you haven't pushed the color all the way through. And there's a lot going on inside this that you cannot see. When we open it up, you'll see there are all kinds of color variations on the inside.
Reading the apex of a fold (27:59)
I'll put it right back in there and take one more look. What I'm doing is marking. This is what I call the apex, where a petal comes back together. These are always tough spots. That's where the most compression is. On all of these it's one of the most difficult spots, because you've got high tension and high compression, and each one is super tight. So I look at this and mark it visually: this petal, I've got to push more in here. Now I know exactly where I need to put water. I don't need to put water anywhere else, because these are done, and I'm going to leave them alone and focus only on those areas. That's a really cool part of this process. You can control it.
I want to give it a little more dye, so I'm putting a little water in this area and letting it sit, and I'm just going to watch it feed. I'll pick it up once again, because I think we got it this time. And you can see there's moisture here. This is where it starts to get difficult. I took my time, we had a few things going on, I walked away from it for a minute, and you can see it's starting to get moisture in it. There's a fair amount of that going on in here. So let's see if we can get it through. I'm going to be pretty aggressive from here on out, because I know the water's already taking off without me. These Ron Stars get really thick and big at the bottoms and middles.
Once it gets going, you can keep it fluid, cover bigger areas, go back and forth and just watch it. You don't want puddles. You're just trying to push even water through it. We'll let it sit for a second and look again. Yeah, I think we've got to give up on that at this point, because it's already wet. I think that's had its day. I'm going to add a little more dye and a little more soda ash, try to push through this last piece, and then call this one a day, because it's already pretty wet and I don't think I'll get much more dye through it anyway. It'll be great to see what happens.
When to commit (30:14)
This is the point I call commit, where you say, I'm going to commit. I'm not going to add any more dye. I'm just going to push what I've got there through, and push that little bit of soda ash off the surface. Look at the bottom, and I think we'll call this one done. I'll let it sit for a second and take a look. We talked about that spot, and that's what's going on. It's going to be white. We know it right now. We don't have to guess. I can tell you what's going to happen to this one right away, because I can read it. I can see it. It's looking really good, but we're going to have some big white in there, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your taste.
Experiment 4: hot water irrigation with high soda ash (31:05)
Okay, for our last experiment, we're going to change a few variables. It's not a pure experiment against the others, but I think we've got what we need over there to show that. For this one we're going back to where I started, hot water irrigation from the One Hour Tie Dye forum. I forget exactly what John's recipe is, but it's a much higher soda ash to dye ratio. Here I have a 1 to 8 ratio: half a cup of soda ash to one tablespoon of the Aster we've been using. And I've gotten the water out of my faucet as hot as I could.
Given what we know today, what do we think is going to happen? We've got really high soda ash and really high temperature. When we know about soda ash and temperature, what's going to happen is this is going to bind very, very quickly. I haven't done this method in a very long time, so I'm a little worried. But hey, it's an active studio. We're going to see what happens.
So this is 8 to 1, and we're going to do the same thing we did before. I'll take the temperature of the water before we start. You can see even visually that the mix is much lighter. There's a lot of soda ash in there and not a lot of dye. It almost looks pure white. We're just going to cover it, and you can already see the difference in color. Not surprising, there's less dye in here. It doesn't have to be super precise. The water is 126.3 degrees, and that's what we're going to use.
It already looks different on the surface, and it's taken off. We're going to treat it just like before with the open fiber. We'll give it some more of this high soda ash mix, and because there's so little dye, I think we can be a little generous today. Let's give it a fighting chance. Surprisingly enough, the color is still pretty good, and we put very little dye in there.
What I think is going to happen, and we saw it in some of the earlier ones, is that enough water is getting in there that the surface is going to be very, very dark. It's going to block, because it's all set up. I suspect this one will have really nice white lines, because enough moisture got in there before the dye to get into those sinew lines and block. If you're watching closely, you'll start seeing the subtle differences. You can see a lot of water just running around, not really flowing quite like it did before.
Okay, we'll give it a look and see what's on the back side, just to get a visual read. It looks pretty good, actually. There's some really good stuff happening here. I'm really excited to see what this one looks like on the inside. I haven't done one of these in a long time. I'll put it back down, because I don't want to blow all the dye off it and turn it over. Again, I'm using a very high soda ash, very low dye ratio, and I'm going to really give it a go.
You can see how differently the water hits that soda ash. It just runs around and dances on the surface. It doesn't drop right in. You're not seeing a lot of dye color on the surface, just a lot of water. I'm going to treat it just like the other ones. I want to make sure I get soda ash on open fiber just in case it gets water. I'm trying to be as consistent as I can with this experiment and not make too many changes, because we've already changed the water temperature and the dye makeup ratio.
I'm going to turn this one around at this point and get a little on the other side, then pick it up and show you the back side.
Why hot water raises chroma in irrigation tie dye (35:55)
There we go. Lots of white still on the bottom. It looks gorgeous, actually. Really intense and high powered. That's what you find with warmer, hot water. It sets the dye up a lot quicker and raises the chroma. If you want super vivid results from irrigation, hot water is where it's at, but we're going to see what some of the limitations might be when we get to the reveal.
When you've got dye in there, you can see the color come to the surface when you flood it. When you stop, you'll see there's no color left on the surface over here. Nothing's coming to the surface, and you can use that as a read to understand where there's still dye sitting on top. Let's see what the back side looks like. Still lots of white up here. I'm going to leave it alone because it's already wet. There's really nothing I can do there. I'll put a little more dye on these last couple of sections, push a couple more loads of water, and call it a day.
You can feel it when you pick them up. There's a maximum amount of water it can take. I'm feeling this right now and it's pretty full. It feels like a full diaper. That's a good way to figure out how much fluid is in there. I haven't done these high soda ash, low dye ones in sequential order before, and what I'm thinking right now is that maybe that was a mistake, because as I was pushing through, the back end got more moisture. I don't know. We'll find out when we open it, but that's what's going through my head.
I'm going to turn this one around to make sure I push that last section with a little water from both directions, to be consistent, and give it one more pass of irrigation to get the soda ash off the surface.
Irrigating a thick fold from one side (38:09)
Notice we're doing everything from one side today. For those of you who dye a lot, you know how thick these are. It's really powerful that you can take something like a Ron Star, which is many layers of fabric, and do it from one side. I haven't flipped these over. As you get familiar with it, there are a lot of cool things you can do by flipping it and adding color to the back side. But today we're running controlled experiments and pushing it all from one side. I like pushing from one side, because to me it maximizes the splits and the visual effect. I don't want to step on that. I don't want to put other colors on top of the beauty I just created. So for single colors I really try to do it from one side. And mind you, this is a single color, and we're getting lots of different colors through it.
I'm going to stop there. I know it's already pretty full. Give it a second to drip, and we'll give you one last look before we put it aside and batch it. And there you have it. You might say, why don't you just keep going? Because it's wet, I'm not going to get dye through there the same way. That's one of the benefits of working the back side. On these really wet ones, you can put a color on, and it will sit on the very surface, but it's not going to go very far. So we're going to set this aside.
Reading all four irrigation experiments before batching (39:36)
Just to review. On the first one we used no soda ash at all and pushed it through. I'm really curious to see the underside. It looks interesting. Kind of pastelly to me. Not very exciting.
The next one was the late soda ash introduction, where we put the dye on without soda ash, pushed it through for a few minutes, and then came on top with just soda ash. It already looks different. A little more vibrant on the back end, and a little white right here.
On this one we introduced the dye and soda ash at the same time. That's the standard process I use, so we're activating and pushing it through at once. As you remember, we struggled with that part earlier. Still white, but it's changed a little. We'll turn it back over and let it do its thing.
This one is the one we just did with the hot water. It looks very different already. Lots of white. I suspect there's going to be a ton of white in this, because when you put that high soda ash on, the dye is just hitting the brakes, brakes, brakes. Physically and chemically, it's really tough to get dye through these with hot water and high soda ash. It would be interesting to try hot water with low soda ash. Maybe we'll do that next time.
How little dye irrigation uses, and learning each color (41:12)
Okay, so we've got fiber, we've put in the liquid, the dye, and we've activated it, but it's not cured. I also want to note that we started with four tablespoons of dye, and we still have about that much left. It shows you how little dye is needed. It's not what you see used in ice dyeing. This is a much more conservative, economical way to do this kind of work without going through pounds and pounds of dye.
Also note this was a single color. If you look behind me, I have an immense amount of dyes I've collected, and it's this model of tie dyeing that caused me to do that. Each color splits, and each one has a different personality. When you get into ice dyeing and irrigation, you start to learn these colors, and temperature is a control. When you change it, the colors change too. So just like I experiment with single colors over and over again in liquid, I do the same thing here, because you have to learn these colors. They all have their own personality and their own attributes. The more familiar you are with them, the more you can do with them.
How to cure irrigation tie dye with a boil batch (42:32)
So I'm going to batch these. They're not cured yet, and I'm impatient. The hot water one probably has much more activation because of the hot water, and I want to get through curing as fast as I can.
Okay, so we're about to batch. Over the years I've developed a process I call the boil batch. Boil batch is about exploiting the chemistry and the thermal variable. Essentially, I take a pot of my tap water, which comes out at about 138 degrees, and add some soda ash. I actually think with this style of dyeing we don't need it, because there's enough soda ash in there, but I always do it for protection. It's cheap. I'll put about a quarter cup to a half cup of soda ash in the water, put it on the stove on high, and bring it to a boil. That typically takes about 15 minutes. I just want to cover the pieces with water. The water is really there to create the temperature. It doesn't really need the soda ash, but it's cheap, so I'm adding half a cup.
So we have water I pulled out of my faucet at about 130 degrees. I'll verify so we can run a nice experiment. 133 degrees. We're going to start with this first one, and we'll come back and show you what happens with the rest. Remember, this first one had no soda ash on it at all. It's all just dye floating in that fiber, nothing binding it. If I washed it right now, most of that should come out. There might be some staining. In this case the soda ash in the water is going to be really helpful, because this one doesn't have any. This one's actually fascinating. I usually introduce soda ash with this style, so I've never done it this way, and this is really exciting for me too.
So I'm going to submerge it in this pot of water. That one's actually floating, which is interesting. What's happening right now is the thermal variable is increasing, and there's been a raise in pH. Whether it's going to be enough to change the fact that it didn't have soda ash, we'll see. Super excited about that. I'm going to do this with the rest of these over here.
Results: irrigation with no soda ash (45:17)
And now we get to see the results. The first shirt we did, if you recall, had no soda ash. As you saw when we added the dye, it penetrated the shirt almost immediately. It took very little liquid to get the dye through, and it just took off. We also saw that the Ron Stars were getting a little pale, and you can clearly see that here. Because of the way we boil batch, with soda ash in the water, it did get activation, but only from the batching water. You can see it creates some really interesting effects. I think it shows not only what happens when there's no soda ash, but also the beauty that can happen. I've done shirts without soda ash, or with later introduction of soda ash, and they have a very different feel. People don't understand how you do it.
Results: soda ash added late (46:08)
The next one got a very similar treatment. We tried to hold the water temperature constant, added the dye without the soda ash, and then came in shortly after and added it. The intention was to get the benefit of the flow you get with no soda ash, and then lock it in place when we put the soda ash in. This one's interesting. With these no soda ash loads, I would have expected a bit more of this white to fill in on both shirts. But knowing the challenges I've had with this color in the past, I think it's the color. It has lots of reds, and I think they're just resistant to getting into some of those places. They also create a very interesting effect. You see a bit more striking chroma in these areas. That's where the soda ash was there, so it bound at full dye strength, but it locked a lot of this in differently than the no soda ash one did.
Results: soda ash and dye mixed together (47:05)
The next one was the full combination of soda ash and dye, the mix I typically work with. I'm also surprised at the amount of white in this, but again, we're working with a dye, and that's its personality. Every time I come back to some of my old work with those hard white lines, my wife says, why don't you do that more? I love those. Let's take a look at the back. Yeah, there you start to see it. A lot better color. It set up pretty hard, and this is what I call blowing through it. In these last sections there aren't a lot of layers, so it's very easy to push color all the way through, and that's what you're seeing there. It's crazy that there are so many white lines, but look how cool it makes it look.
Results: hot water and high soda ash (47:52)
And this one is the most interesting. If you remember, this is the hot water shirt, with very high soda ash and very low dye concentration: half a cup of soda ash to a tablespoon of dye. This is kind of what I expected. The dye load is low and the soda ash load is high, so whatever hits the fiber strikes pretty quickly. You'll see a distinct difference between high soda ash and low soda ash, and you see it in these gutters.
This is a Ron Star. This is the top petal here, and these are the gutters underneath. What's happening is the dye hits, and there's not a lot of it. What's there strikes almost immediately and sticks. Then you keep pushing fluid through, and there's really no dye left, just soda ash. It fills with moisture and locks all of that up, and there's really nothing you can do. I could have sat on that thing and pounded dye through it from the top for half an hour, and it would not change any of this. You could turn it over and try to force some dye, maybe black, through the back to fill some of this in, but there are limitations to that.
So hopefully this gives you a pretty good idea of the differences. There are things here for you to play with and experiment with, to find out what works for you and for that dye. But hopefully you now understand that irrigation is incredibly fun and incredibly fast, and something I think everybody could do at home in their sink, bathtub or utility sink. I hope this gives you a better understanding, and the confidence that when you're adding these two ingredients, you're thinking about the water and the temperature and how they affect the dye. That's the fun.
Next episode: Kenney style with Jon Riley (49:41)
To give you a little idea of what we're doing next episode, we're going to talk about something not a lot of people have talked about, though a lot of people have shared it, and we're going to try to do it in a way that helps you understand it better, without necessarily giving you all the secrets. Jon Riley is going to join us next time, and we're going to show you some of the tips and tricks he's been doing.
Watch the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCU35vOgVd4
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