Name: Amy

Message: I am working on a quilt piece for my nephew's graduation quilt.  I wanted to make my quilt piece like a card he designed.  It is black with white a red areas.  I wanted to dye the fabric black and leave the other areas white for stiching.  Is there any way to do this?

Sure, you can do this. You can thicken your dye with alginate and paint it exactly where you want it. Don't try this with all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye; use only a cool water fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye.

If you prefer, you can mask out the white area with wax, and immersion dye the whole piece, as in batik. This is a good approach for large areas of black that you want to be a perfectly smooth solid color. The crack lines in batik can be mostly avoided, if you don't like them, by choosing 100% beeswax or microcrystalline wax, with none of the paraffin that is usually added to batik wax.
 
Another approach would be to use fabric paint or fabric markers. Markers are too much trouble for a large area of fabric, but ideal for drawing on a small piece. A good fabric marker produces permanent pigment (not dye) marks on fabric. Some good fabric markers need to be heat set by ironing, while others do not. It's not much trouble to do the heat setting, but a bad mistake to skip it in those brands that require it, so do check the label. Don't just use a permanent marker, such as a Sharpie pen; fabric markers are much better for this purpose.

See the following links for more information:

"About Fiber Reactive Dyes"

"Sodium alginate, Superclear, and other dye thickeners

"How to batik" (for waxing)

"Beyond dye: more ideas for coloring fabric"


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