Balzer Designs

Ice Dyed T-Shirts

My Brother and his family are coming for a visit in June. I wanted to make his son and my son matching "cousin crew" t-shirts. However, when you order 100% cotton toddler tees, they come in multi-packs. So my little project became a big project and now they each get a wardrobe of brand new colorful t-shirts! (The boys are two different sizes, so they each get six t-shirts.) I ice dyed the t-shirts. (Read this post from 2020 about the process.) And I experimented with a number of different wrapping, folding, and tying techniques. Take a peek: I love... Read more →

Shibori: Family Party

We had a little quarantine pod shibori party a few weekends ago and now we look like a singing group. I set up my studio so that we could all have some inky blue fun: There were seven of us: my brother, his partner, their son, my Mother, plus Steve, me, and the baby. The babies were not very helpful. My Mom and my brother's partner ended up mostly doing childcare. Nonetheless, we pumped out tons of blue tie dye (we didn't use real indigo, even though we used shibori techniques). Take a peek at what we made: There were... Read more →

It's the Summer of Tie Dye!

This is definitely the summer of tie dye and I couldn't leave the baby out of it: I made him a super cute sun printed shirt with some heat transfer vinyl (HTV) words across the front. Here's a look at the stencil I used for the sun printing process: Check out the details: I love how the t-shirt came out! It feels like summertime to me! And the baby is happy with it (even if it is a little bit big on him): This was a fun and easy project to make. It would work for kids or grown-ups. Also,... Read more →

Ice Dyed Dress Muslin

This is one of those projects that started one way and then morphed into something else entirely. I wanted to draft a pattern for an easy summer dress to wear. After I made the pattern, I decided to sew it out of muslin before I actually moved on to "real" fabric. As it turned out, I didn't have any muslin, but I did have some Kona PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric. In the absence of muslin, I decided to use it. Once I put the "muslin" version of the dress together, it wasn't quite right and yet I found I... Read more →

Ice Dyeing Scrunch

I did some more ice dyeing this week! But this time I didn't do any fancy folding or tying, I simply scrunched up the fabric. Check out my scrunch results: I did the t-shirts in two batches and each time I put a piece of fabric underneath the rack to "catch" the excess dye. These are the pieces of fabric that I scrunched up under the t-shirts: There are some really lovely details in there. But I'm not sure if I like the scrunch quite as much as the folding and tying...but it could also be because I tried to... Read more →

Ice Dyeing

I experimented with some ice dyeing over the weekend and I looove the results. In fact, I can't stop. Every day I take something that sat overnight and wash it out and then I start a new dye project. I think I'm addicted.... The process is simple: 1. Wash your fabric (or t-shirt or apron or table runner or whatever). This is to get rid of any sizing or other chemicals. You do want to use something made from 100% cotton or the dye won't stick. 2. Soak your fabric in a Soda Ash and water mixture for 20 minutes.... Read more →