Accordion Fold Step by Step

[steve]

I have started an accordion fold tutorial on the wiki!

Accordion Fold Step by Step

Steve

[m0mto3]

I for one would love to see a picture of the end result of these folds.
Any others feel the same way???

[Mad Dog]

Hello Everyone!

I have become hooked on tie dying, and have both DVDs, Tom/Martine, and Michael Fowler.  As a newbie, its interesting to see the differences between the two.  I also have a couple of books, including Tie Dye to Die For and Batik You Can't Resist.

My first attempts with accordion folds went quite well: I soaked shirts from Dharma in soda ash, wrung them out, then when damp, used squeeze bottles to apply the dye.  The results were very good, for a beginner.

Last Saturday, I used artificial sinew to tie my folds.  I also used immersion dying for the first time, per the instructions in Tie Die to Dye for.

I did not soak the shirts in soda ash.

I used 1 cup of kosher salt /gallon of water, with 2 TSB dye/gallon water, (forest green), and let soak over night.  The recipe calls for non-iodized salt, and I believe kosher salt is non-iodized.  That's all I used.     

The results were horrible.  I have 4 green shirts, not forest green, but more of a Army green.   That's not the worse part, for  some reason, there is virtually no contrast from the folds; if you look really really close in bright bright light, you can kinda sorta tell there are lighter bands of green

I don't really like the feel of the artifical sinew, it seems hard to make tie tightly to me, e.g., the knots seem to slip and I swear it stretched.  But it could be just that I'm not used to this product, and the problem was something else. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

[pburch]

Last Saturday, I used artificial sinew to tie my folds.  I also used immersion dying for the first time, per the instructions in Tie Die to Dye for.

I did not soak the shirts in soda ash.

I used 1 cup of kosher salt /gallon of water, with 2 TSB dye/gallon water, (forest green), and let soak over night.  The recipe calls for non-iodized salt, and I believe kosher salt is non-iodized.  That's all I used.     

The results were horrible.  I have 4 green shirts, not forest green, but more of a Army green.   That's not the worse part, for  some reason, there is virtually no contrast from the folds; if you look really really close in bright bright light, you can kinda sorta tell there are lighter bands of green

Did you add soda ash to the dyebath? How many minutes after you added the dye? The recipe in Tie Dye to Dye For and Batik You Can't Resist says to add the soda ash after half an hour of soaking the fabric in the dye. Is that what you did? If you omitted the soda ash altogether, a disaster would have been inevitable.

Soaking in dye overnight lets the dye creep as far as it can through the garment, which tends to reduce contrasts to a minimum. Sometimes the ties will be tight enough to exclude all dye, sometimes they won't. If you want strong contrasts, I don't recommend that recipe. Instead, try low water immersion dyeing, or stick to the direct application of dye, as in tie-dyeing. High water immersion dyeing (that is, dyeing with a high ratio of water to fabric) is best for dyeing solid colors in untied fabric or clothing.

I have not found Tie Dye to Dye For and Batik You Can't Resist to be a particularly reliable book. Books by Elin Noble, Ann Johnston, and even the very inexpensive books by Sulfiati Harris are more instructive.

Paula

[Mad Dog]

Oh nuts... I don't remember adding any soda ash to the water... guess that, and the overnight soak,  explains it...

[pburch]

Oh, well, now you know what NOT to do. The way that recipe is written in Tie Dye to Dye For is confusing.  It starts off by saying "Articles to be dyed in a bath do not need to be soaked in a soda ash solution," then does not even mention the all-important soda ash again until much lower in the instructions, and then they are vague about the amount required. If you ever want to do high water ratio immersion dyeing again, you'll want to find a better recipe first.

If you're trying to get a result like the "Blue and Purple Crinkled Shirt" on their following page, I'd advise you not to follow their instructions for dyeing at all. Tie the shirt the same way as you did before—it's the same as the Scrunch or Chaos Fold in the Tie Dye Wiki—then presoak your garment in soda ash, if you want the crispest color delineations. As in your earlier tie-dyeing, apply one color to one side of the tied scrunched shirt, and the other color to the other side. Use alginate to thicken your dye if you want very crisp white in the middle, but consider trying the first time without it to see what you get.

To get more interesting but less crisp gradations of color, do the same tie, but put one cup of water with one to two teaspoons of dye mixed into it in the bottom of a small bucket. The size of the container should be small enough that the shirt fits quite tightly in the bottom in a single layer. Place the shirt in the bucket so that one side is immersed in the first layer of dye. Pour the other color of dye over the top, making sure to evenly distribute the dye, not leaving any white areas. Mixing in one teaspoon of salt per cup of water can increase the crystalline patterns. After ten or twenty minutes to allow the colors to spread, pour on soda ash dissolved in water, as described in How to do low water immersion dyeing. The top of the dyebath should be near the top of the fabric. There is only a little extra liquid in an LWI bath, not a large amount like in the 'high water' dye bath you used on Saturday.

Paula

[Mad Dog]

I dye every Saturday, I'll try both of these methods and let you know how the peices came out.  Thank you so much, Paula!

BTW... I actually got interested in all of this because of Paula.  I was doing an internet search, and somehow hit Paula's How to Batik page.  It was fascinating to me, I kept going back and going back.  I tried to find some local workshops, but there is nothing on batik, so I thought, okay, the only way I will find out if I can batik is to do it, and if I don't like it, I'll bundle it up and sell it on ebay.  So I bought some books on batik, and some of the books refer to tie dye. And the tie dye really caught my eye; went back and reviewed Paula's site on tie dye.  Her hits probably went up by a few hundred, in the month of August.   Bought Mike Fowler/Tom/Martine's DVDs, How to Tie Dye Book by Virginia Glesser, (ALL EXCELLENT for a beginner),  finally worked up the nerve to purchase a tie dye kit and a few T shirt blanks from Dharma.   I've dyed  chaos, diagonal, tire track, 1/2 fan, full fan, with excellent results, so it was very disappointing the accordion folds did not work out. 

Ironically, I have everything for batik, and have never tried it yet.

My husband says, when I am dyeing, this is a happy house!

[Jaja]

This link works for me...
http://tie-dyewiki.com/wikinew/index.php?title=Accordion