For Sam & Anu

Ready for tub dying, I ordered Brilliant Blue and Alpine Blue to mix together. These formulas use less dye per gallon but I didn't like each color independently. After several rinsing and a drip dry, I thought the blue was too dark and thought to add more Alpine, but looking at the final dry, I think it's a perfect cornflower blue. I ordered New Black because it is supposed to bleed blue. I thought it would be better than purple or gray. (read the first post) The bleed is a pinkish color and rinses out decently, but the white isn't the original white of the shirt. Next to the blue and black, it appears white enough.

Learning from the last experiment of shielding the white portion with plastic, I cut the end of the bag, made a tube and put it in the middle of a accordion-folded shirt. I tied both ends TIGHT! This time I kept those bindings around the plastic through the initial rinse out, the second rinse out with the other ties undone, and even a hot rinse cycle in the front-loading machine.

I took off the plastic and draped the shirts on the side of the garage utility sink while I rinsed them again. In that few minutes, the white picked up the dye from the blue and black sections. GRRR. I tried to rinse that out. Nope. I put them through three rinse cycles and decided the white portion looked like marble. Ok, I can live with that.

I put 10 shirts in the washer and rinsed twice more on hot, then added Synthrapol, ran a cycle, then added detergent and rinsed until the water was clear.

The white picked up more color ...

Off-white, slightly blue marble.

I made 4-ring circles on the waist of Anu's shirt. I can't wait to see it on her!