I took a class on Tuesday night about using transfer or disperse dyes.  These are the kinds of dyes used on polyester, which is not a very dyeable fiber.  The process we used for these was to paint with them on paper.  At the strength we used them they were almost like painting with watercolors.  You could do all kinds of drips and play with salt and spray bottles to make textures in the wet paint.  I mostly used a really grungy beat up paintbrush because I wanted a lot of brush strokes and stray smears for texture.

The colors when you paint with them are very dull and in most cases nothing at all like the finished piece once it is printed.  The yellow is a deep mustard color as paint, but bright bright sunflower yellow when printed.  It is very much a leap of faith to know that what you are painting and what you will get are not going to be the same colors.  I didn’t want saturated primaries, so I dulled my colors down by adding a few drops of the complementary color to the mix – my red got some green in it etc and I mixed a custom palette before I started painting.

You paint enough paper to cover your piece of fabric.  I made 3 large sheets and a bunch of smaller ones.  Wait for everything to dry.  Then you sandwich your fabric against the painted side of the paper and put the whole thing in to a heat press.  My friend Karen has a press that is 15 inches across, so we could do 15 inch sections at a time.  16 seconds at 400 degrees and the colors transfer from paper to fabric.  It is the combination of the high temperature and the pressure of the press that makes the dyes vaporize and then re-combine with the polyester fibers.  Magic.

This is about 3 layers of printing and I printed the back as well.  The fabric is a drapy peachskin polyester.  Karen taught me how to do a hand-rolled hem, too, so I am hemming this one to wear it as a scarf.