Click on the two pictures below to see them in greater detail.
The details are much finer in the center than at the edges, with much smaller drops of dye there.
Carefully drawn pencil guidelines were essential.
I used a large compass as well as a yardstick and a
protractor to draw 12 equally spaced radial lines through a
center pint, and multiple concentric circles centered upon that
point, up to about 14" (35 cm) in diameter.
I used an Eppindorf automatic pipettor (non-electronic, mid-1980s model) to drip carefully metered droplets, from 5 to 200 microliters each, depending on the size of dye dot desired, onto a cotton knit shirt which had previously been soaked in a solution of 1 cup (250 ml) of soda ash in 1 gallon (4 liters) of water, then line-dried. The dyes were Procion MX type dye, mixed at approximately 4 teaspoons (20 ml), by volume, per cup of water, along with 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of urea per cup of water; more was used for black and turquoise.
I did not plan in advance which colors and sizes of drops to put where; this was a part of the process.
I dyed the background after dyeing the mandala. This was, in my opinion, a mistake. In the future I will dye the background first, then fill in the mandala, to avoid messing up any of the fine details of the mandala itself.
Page created: March 23, 2003
Last updated: March 23, 2003
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