Playing with Inkodye

I've been trialling a product called Inkodye, Dale (The Threadstudio) had sent me a pack to have a play with.  

The box says 'a new and easy way to permanently print your own designs on fabric'.  Inkodye is marketed as a photosensitive dye that is activated by sunlight or UV, working on cotton, linen, silk, rayon, canvas, or any other natural and absorbent material. 





The colour I've got is red.  It comes with a bottle of dye and a screw on roller applicator thingy.  The idea is to use negative images on transparency film and print from this - it can also be used with the usual sun printing techniques using leaves, etc. 

As I didn't have any transparency/projector film for an inkjet printer I made my own alternative version.

Using super cheap plastic folders that nicely opened out, I painted these with black acrylic paint and left to dry - not long on a sunny winter day.

plastic folder

covered with black acrylic paint

design and mark making tools

Using some mark making tools - skewer, pencil and safety pin, I scratched designs into the dry paint.  The paint did peel off in places where it wasn't meant to but it just adds to the image.

scratched sheet

 










I found the next step a bit hit and miss, this is where the ink is rolled on to the fabric.  The bottle comes with its own roller.  As you roll the ink comes out of the bottle onto the roller - the roller is plastic and I found it a bit tricky to get an even coating.  What is quite cute is the little stopper, so you can stop the ink flow and still keep rolling to try and spread the ink.  Even though it was a coolish day the ink seemed to be drying almost instantly which made spreading it even harder.

rolling on the ink

drying in the sun

sneeking a peak

After leaving it for 20-30 minutes and removing the plastic the pattern had developed although the fabric was quite damp - bit odd given how the dye seemed to dry quickly at the beginning.  

after removing plastic

The kit comes with its own washing detergent, so into the machine it went.  As its winter the sun is quite low and the plastic lifted a bit with the warmth so I'm not sure whether the pattern would have been more crisp if the light had been more direct.  

washed - wrong side

washed

There is still some dye left so my next experiment will probably be with the other design, I might try diluting the dye and applying it without using the roller to see if I can get a more even lighter more even coverage.  Now just need to get another sunny calm day ...