Ice Dyeing With Liquid Dye: Yay or Nay?
Hello from WAXON Studio — where we ice dye professionally, year after year! We find that a lot of people, when brand new to ice dyeing or when first hearing the term “ice dyed,” think that it has something to do with using your regular liquid tie dyes in a frozen way, i.e., freezing cubes of already-mixed liquid dyes and then melting them over your prepared items.
I’ll confess, years and years ago when I first heard about ice dyeing, I also thought that was the case! The truth is even cooler (no pun intended), and in this blog post, I’m going to break it down if you really should be ice dyeing with liquid dye.
What Is Ice Dyeing?
Ice dyeing is sprinkling dry dye powder onto (or under) ice cubes, letting the cubes melt while pulling colors down onto the thing you’re dyeing.
One of my first ice-dye timelapse videos.
I’ll be really honest here, I was strictly a tie-dye (liquid bottle dye) artist for years and years. I was great at it, I loved teaching it, and training others to teach it.
I loved the work that I made and the work that my students and staff made. But, the moment I washed out my first ice dye, I was changed forever.
This is what I was looking for. Incredible color splits, deeply intricate patterning even from simple folds, and it just had so much more depth! As I’ve aged from my twenties to my thirties to my forties, I’ve wanted to wear less of the “summer camp tie dye look” and more of a hand-dyed textiles look.
The process is similar enough to liquid dyeing, and yet the outcome is wildly different… and dare I say, better? I’ll leave that up to you. You can read up on my favorite reasons for choosing ice dye instead of tie dye here.
What Is the Difference Between Liquid Dye & Powder Dye?
First of all, in this post, we are only talking about using fiber reactive dyes (also called “reactive dyes,” “cold process dyes,” “FRDs”, “fiber dyes”, and “Procion* type dyes”). They come in powder form, which is what you need for ice dyeing, but they can also be mixed with water for liquid dyeing.
Fiber reactive dyeing is one of the world’s best inventions for home dyers. The dyes are incredibly easy to use, affordable, easy to find online, not heat activated, and used in a heap of different applications.
I love fiber reactive dyes so much, I’ve built my livelihood on them! Here at WAXON, we don’t use anything but fiber reactive dyes. The fact that they come in powder form makes them even easier for great ice dyeing.
Can You Use Liquid Dye To Ice Dye?
Technically, you could make up some liquid dye and then freeze it, and melt those cubes over a t-shirt or anything else you wanted to dye. However, that would be missing the point of real ice dyeing — and add a lot of unnecessary extra steps for you.
Can I Ice Dye With Liquid RIT Dye?
Before we move further into the ice dyeing literature, I want to address the RIT factor. Being one of the most available dyes at non-specialty shops (like your grocery store or drug store), RIT dyes are chosen often by newbies to the dye world, and then we here at WAXON get asked questions about how they work (or why they didn’t work!).
I’ll just say again, skip the hassle of using anything besides fiber reactive dyes for ice dyeing. Go straight to what works, what is affordable, and what is used by the best artists on the scene.
You may be able to use RIT powder dyes for ice dyeing, if you can find them, but again, I can’t attest to their chemistry or colorfastness or even effectiveness in ice dye applications. Fiber reactive dyes are what you want!
What Happens If You Ice Dye With Liquid Dye?
If you try to melt frozen liquid dyes over your item to dye, like a t-shirt, all you’re doing is slowly spreading a solid color. Because you’ve already mixed the dye powder into a homogenized single color, it doesn’t matter whether you apply it in a liquid or solid state — it’s still just one color.
You may see lighter and darker areas of that color, but you won’t see the magical splits that are the hallmark of ice dyeing!
Why Doesn’t Ice Dyeing With Liquid Dye Work Very Well?
What we really want in our ice dye results is color splits. Splits are the result of having ice cubes slowly melting and pulling each component color out of the powder dye, molecule by molecule, splitting greens into yellows and blues, splitting purples into blues and reds, splitting blacks and greys into every color imaginable… and so on.
The only way to get those cool splits is to keep your dye in powder form, unmixed, and let the ice cubes slowly melting be the thing that divides the colors out.
Ice Dyeing With Powder Dye: 6 Steps
I’ve got a whole huge blog post about ice dyeing with powder dyes, so I’ll point you in that direction first! For those who don’t want to navigate away from this post yet, here’s a brief intro.
When we talk about ice dyeing, the most important thing to know is that we’re talking about using fiber reactive dye powders. These powders are sprinkled over or under ice, to create amazingly beautiful tie-dye effects on cloth.
We do sell a lot of ice dye kits, so I’ll be mentioning them here. They’re just so useful, especially if you’re new to ice dyeing!
Step 1: Prepare Your Fabric
What are you going to ice dye first? Fiber reactive dyes are formulated to work best on cellulose fibers. That means you should choose something that’s cotton, linen, hemp, rayon, bamboo, etc. If it’s polyester or nylon, it will not work.
If you are dyeing something dirty or brand new, make sure to do a pre-wash (called a scour). You don’t want any dirt, oils, fabric softeners or starches left on the fabric.
Even if you pulled it out of the back of your closet and it hasn’t been worn since the last time you washed it, give it another wash in hot water — it couldn’t hurt, and it will only help your results to look amazing.
Step 2: Soak Your Item
Damp fabric holds patterns much better than dry fabric. You also need to soak your item in a soda ash soaking solution (mixed with 1 cup soda ash powder to each gallon of water). Soda ash activates fiber reactive dyes.
As a bonus, with our kits, you don’t need a soda ash soak! This is a huge selling point of buying a kit to get you started.
The soda ash is already mixed in with the dye powders, so you don’t have to do the soda ash soak. I repeat, with our kits, you don’t have to make a soda ash bath or do any pre-soaking!
Go ahead and soak your item in regular tap water (if you’re using our kit) or a soda ash soak, and wring it out like crazy. You want all the drips to be wrung out.
The reason we soak in water and wring it out is because damp fabric holds patterns way better than dry fabric, which is really helpful for the next step.
Step 3: Fold, Bind, Twist, or Tie Your Pattern
Oh, patterns! There are so many videos on YouTube teaching thousands of different folds. Our Ice Dye Kits come with a two-sided illustrated patterns handout, which takes you through our 6 Favorite Patterns for Beginners.
They’re arranged from easiest to hardest! Nothing crazy advanced like an ice dye mandala, not yet. I advise practicing the simpler patterns first before jumping into more complicated folds.
Whether you choose a simple scrunch or something that requires more concentration, like the heart, now is the time to do that. Use rubber bands or sinew to tie or band your pattern into place.
Your item will cooperate because it’s been thoroughly dampened and wrung out! Again, damp fabric holds patterns much better than dry fabric.
Step 4: In The Muck or On The Rack?
There are two main types of ice dyeing, in the muck (a container that the project sits in while the ice melts), or on the rack (so that the icy dye water can drip through and away from your piece, usually into another container or the sink).
Our bandana kit comes with its own perfectly sized container so that you can ice dye in the muck, but we won’t be there to insist you use it. Feel free to ice dye on the rack if that’s what you want to try.
There is not one better method than the other. It’s just personal and artistic preference.
At WAXON Studio, we are muck dyers 99% of the time. Try a few experiments and see what you like better. There are benefits and drawbacks to both.
Step 5: Dye Over Ice or Dye Under Ice?
There are two main types of dye powder application. There is ice first, with dye on top. Or, there is powder first with ice on top. Our kits’ instructions recommend dye over ice (DOI).
At WAXON, we are dye-over-ice 90% of the time. For me, the only time to put your powder down first is when you need specific colors to be on specific places.
I find I get less freckling (solid bits of dye powder that never get dissolved) when I sprinkle powder on top of the ice. But, many other ice dyers swear by powder first, and their stuff looks great.
Some people even enjoy the freckling look and want to get more of it. Try a few experiments and see what you like better. You might really like the look of one over the other.
Step 6: Apply Ice & Dye!
If you are doing ice first, like I do, create an even layer of ice cubes. You want there to be enough that there are no “bald spots” where you can see naked fabric through the ice.
Once you have enough ice, go ahead and sprinkle your powder all over your piece. It’s that simple!
If you are doing our dye first, go ahead and do a light dusting with your powder all over your piece. Then, cover evenly with ice cubes.
Once your piece is totally covered with ice and powders, you kick back and wait. Remember, we have gone ahead and pre-mixed the soda ash activating powder with the dye powder for all-in-one sprinkling fun.
You only need ice cubes and our prepared powders. Our kits are the only ones that have both pre-mixed powders and swatch stickers on top showing you how that color splits.
Just a little extra love for our ice dye newbies. It helps to be able to see how the colors might split before you buy!
Step 7: The Wash Out
Start with a cool or cold wash, with lots of rinsing. Be careful when you cut off or remove ties/bands! Keep rinsing and squeezing and agitating until there’s no dye coming out of the piece. Once the water runs clear...
Do a hot wash, and add a little bit of Blue Dawn dish soap. Keep rinsing and sudsing with hot H20 until the water runs clear again! Don’t be surprised if more color comes out in the hot wash, that’s normal.
You're ready to dry.
If you were hoping to try ice dyeing with liquid dye, you might want to hold off because you could be disappointed with the results. Try ice dyeing with powder dye instead!
Here is a synopsis of this article for you.
Powder dye contains multitudes of different colors, so you don’t want to pre-mix those up into liquid or you won’t see any splits.
Ice dyeing with powder requires fewer steps in preparing your dye, since it already comes in powder form, and you don’t have to do anything extra!
Our ice dye kits make a really helpful starter tool!
