As a curious fan of art materials, I am always happy to explore techniques and their variations. A reader suggested that for low immersion dyeing (my instructions here) one does not need salt, so I took up the challenge with a controlled experiment. After all, it is chemistry. What does the salt do that we would be able to see? I recently bought a new Procion dye color from Dharma: Deep Space, and here was an excuse to try it.
Hypothesis: If salt does not affect the low immersion dye process, then two pieces of cloth, one dyed with salted water, the other without, will appear the same after dyeing.
Two strips of white Kona cotton, each 8 inches by 44 inches. Identical containers. Stirred the powder first. Two containers of warm water, dissolved my 1/2 cup of salt in one. Soaked the strips together in the soda ash mixture. Cut off an ear/corner of one of the strips to label it as the one without salt. Pasted up the dye separately Soaked the strips for the same length of time in the same amount of dye bath. Washed by hand separately, but at the same time. Ironed dry. They are actually a bit more blue than they look in the photo.
Can you tell which is which?
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