Dying with Rust

The fun continues in the Irresistible Dye Class I teach at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.   This week we explored dying with rust. Its quite a simple process and it achieves some fabulous results. 

To start we laid down a large plastic bag and upon this we placed our fabric that had been sprayed with a 50/50 water vinegar solution.  

Fabric with rusty huddles from an old loom laid upon it

Then we placed the rusty objects on the fabric and covered the rusty pieces with another bit of fabric. This was all wrapped in the plastic bag to prevent the fabric from drying out, the dampness encourages the objects to rust onto the fabric.

The rusty fabric after a week of soaking

We left the fabric for a week, and the above is what happened in the space of 7 days.

Each layer of fabric reacts differently to the process

Tori displaying her rust dyed fabrics 

For more images of the results of our rust dying visit the Irresistible Dye Facebook page.