Oct 3, 2010: Tie-dye

E. had been asking us for quite some time to do some tie-dying. Unfortunately this is not that easy to do with a big group using the facilities where we normally host our craft classes. (supervising 10 kids running around a small room with lots of  hot water and big dye pots, was not a scenario that appealed to us very much!) So we arranged a "private"class and over a couple of weekends tie-dyed some bedsheets.

It is actually quite easy to find fabric dye in Manila although only the Venus brand is available and the stock of different colours is quite unpredictable. Carolina carries it as well as National Bookstore and it is often available at stalls in public markets. We actually had to get a magnifying glass out just to read the instructions and unfortunately there are no indications of how much dye to use. We made an educated guess and used 14 sachets (2grams each) per bedsheet and otherwise followed the instructions to the letter and this is the result:

The colour on the packages was not very close to what actually came out in the end. The blue was more aqua on the package but was a more greyish blue on the dyed fabric. For more intense colours, we probably should have used a few more packages. We also dyed a T-shirt along side these bedsheets and that has already been washed repeatedly. The colours have not faded much, so all in all we were quite please with the results!

If anyone out there has more experience with the Venus dye, please let us know how you got on!