Name: Diane
Message: Hello,
Thank you for your informative website. I have learned so much and was very impressed with your designs. I loved the violet & blue mandala. However, you said that you would have dyed the shirt first instead of after dying the mandala. Would you have retained a white section or overdyed it? How did you keep the mandala from taking up the violet & blue dye? Anyway, I was just curious if you have a second. That is a beautiful shirt!!!

Thanks!

The reason why I've decided to do my backgrounds first is that it is difficult to get the background to go all the way up to the edge of the detailed hand-work section, without running over and obscuring part at the edge. When I am finished, I usually do not want any white between my central image and the background. This is easier to manage by doing the precision hand-work last.

I prefer to retain an undyed white central section. I like to use a full range of colors in the mandala design, and this is possible only when dying on a white background.

I've done this for other projects, such as ironing a picture on the center of a shirt dyed by LWI, by tying off the center circle, and placing the rest of the shirt, all but the center, in a small bucket, into which I then poured various colors of dye, and soda ash. If you tie-dye via the soda ash presoak method, tying off a circle in the front of the garment, and then squirting dye only on the rest of the shirt, you could allow the shirt to dry, unfold it, and then apply small amounts of dye directly to the central circle. The soda ash would remain in the undyed region to fix the dye when you apply it. Or, you can wash the shirt out as usual, then either soak it in soda ash as usual and let it dry before adding the tiny drops of dye for the detail work, or mix the soda ash in with your dye. (The disadvantage of the latter method is that the dye will 'go bad' and become ineffective for further dyeing, an hour or two after the soda ash is mixed with it.)

Instead of leaving the entire central region white, you can also tightly tie the center, repeatedly, and tie-dye it all; the tight ties will leave white areas within which contrasting colors can later be placed.