Tapestry a Day Project--Day 2
Today's Tapestry is a Rainbow Twelve Point Star on a white (slightly blue) Background
and measured 60 x 60 inches.

What is Tie-dye, Anyway?

Originally tie-dye meant any way of tieing, twisting etc. to create a resist to the dye's penetration and thereby produce a pattern when the piece is dunked in dye. Shibori is a good example of this type of tie-dye taken to a high art.

Procion fiber reactive dyes were first introduced in 1956. They changed the whole dye industry, and tie-dye in particular. Procion dyes made dyeing as a hobby or small business possible because:

1. They do not require the use of caustic chemicals.
2. The left over dyes are biodegradable and can be safely disposed of in home septic tanks.
3 .They can be applied cold which is important when you're dripping the dyes on rather than dunking.
4. They produce brilliant permanent colors. They are "fiber reactive", and actually bond to the fiber at an atomic level.

These characteristics made it possible to apply more than one color at a time. Previously the dyes had to be set and the item washed before a second color could be applied, and it was very hard to use more than 2 colors.

That's the technical part of the answer, but what is tie-dye? What people call tie-dye today encompasses a variety of processes. Tie dye patterns range from pieces that look like they were pinned on the wall and had dye thrown at them to very intricate patterns such as stars and Mandalas at Dyed in Vermont. Rudimentary patterns are used behind screen printed images and called tie-dye.

Here's my answer-tie-dye can be just about any way to apply dye to material. We might even need some new names. I use tie-dye art, highly patterned and such to try to distinguish myself, but they're not really very adequate.

So I leave it up to you, what is tie-dye? Please Comment. The next article will be something like "Buyer Be Ware-Tie-dye's dirty little secret" or "Tie-dye what you see might not be what you get".

Tags: dyed in vermont, procion dye, tie-dyes, tiedyes