Ice Dyed Shirts

We’re going on a vacation soon so I thought it would be nice to have some new shirts to take with me. I could have low immersion dyed them, or printed on them, but I wanted them ice dyed.

If you are new to my blog, I created this dye technique back in 2011 and named it Ice Dyeing. It came about because at the time I was writing a column for the local paper on area artists and crafters. The artist I interviewed was talking about snow dyeing. Since we don’t get a lot of snow in this area, she used a snow cone maker machine. I loved her fabric and once it snowed I tried it and loved it, but that was the end of snow and I really didn’t want to buy a machine. Since she made the snow from ice cubes, I thought why not just use ice cubes, and forget about the machine. And that is when ice dyeing was born. I had never used fiber reactive dyes in my life so this was a whole new experience for me! I sat on the floor at Dick Blick’s trying to decide what colors to use!

I emailed Quilting Arts magazine about my technique, and my article, the first article about ice dyeing, appeared in the 2011 issue. In 2013, I taught a Webinar for Interweave. That led me to designing my own class, Icy Delights in 2016. It’s been a popular class taken by 100s of students, both seasoned dyers and beginners. It’s now free and you can watch the videos on my YouTube channel. Under most of the video I have a link to the pdf that I talk about in the video. You can download them to your computer for future reference. Here is the link.

When I started ice dyeing I bought all of my shirts at thrift shops. They worked out fine, but I wanted to have several shirts that fit the same way. I purchased a variety of t-shirts over the years, but the ones I found my favorite are the ones from Blankshirts. I bought a couple several years ago – Bella+Canvas 6450 Missy Short Sleeve VNeck T-shirt. I used them to print on. Here is one printed on with collards back in 2023. I was using primary colors since I planned to wear this shirt at a class I was teaching kids. If you are interested in this process, check out this post. If you’d like to see my post about that class, check this out.

Since I still wear this one, last October I purchased five white ones and three other colored Bella-Canvas shirts. The shirts come in all different colors and sizes. Blankshirts also has a lot of different shirts, and did I mention, they are quite reasonable.

So let’s see what I did with three of the shirts. I decided I wanted to go back to basics – just ice dye one color. One of my favorites in the past has been Mermaid’s Dream. Well, I will tell you I was quite disappointed. It’s kind of blah! But I can fix it later by either printing over it, over ice dyeing it, or dropping it in an Indigo bath. I’m thinking the over ice dyeing may be the way to go but I’ll wear it a bit first. Here is a post where I over ice dyed.

The next is Wedgewood Blue. I was pleasantly surprised about how it turned out, nothing like the pieces of fabric I’ve ice dyed in that past. And while I’m talking about that, when dyeing it depends on the amount of dye, the fabric type, and the length of batching. So my pieces of cotton fabric will dye way different than these cotton jerseys or silks.

The last shirt was a big surprise. I had dyed other fabric, again not t-shirts, with this dye, Celedon, and I absolutely hated the color. However, I saw online where someone had ice dyed it and I thought I’d give it a chance. OMG! I absolutely love it! It’s my favorite of the three. I’m usually not big on green, but love this and the markings.

As far as how much dye I use, I explain that in my class, Icy Delights, that is now free. I weigh the shirt, put that weight into my calculator which is in an Excel spreadsheet (all part of the class), and I get an amount of dye to use. I did quite a bit of research to come up with these amounts, but they really are a starting point. However, I’ve found because I’m not dumping a bunch of dye on ice, I’m not wasting so much of it, and also saving on water because of a quicker rinse. It gives me just a bit more control, although with this technique there isn’t much control!!

Well, I need to get packing, but wanted to show you those before we leave. If you have never ice dyed and want to know more or maybe already ice dyeing but want to see what I shared in my class, check out my free class. If you have any questions, you can contact me at lynda@lyndaheines.com.

Thanks for dropping by. Hope you have a healthy and creative January. See you soon.