From White Blank to Wearable Art: Inside My Ice Dye Studio

People ask me all the time: "How long does it actually take to make one piece?" The honest answer is that the ice dye process takes about 30 hours from start to finish. Most of that time, I'm not touching the garment at all. The ice is doing the work. The chemistry is doing the work. My job is setting up the conditions and then stepping back.

But that setup matters. Every decision I make before the ice even hits the fabric (which blank I choose, how I fold it, where I place the dye) determines what the piece becomes. And every step after the ice melts, from rinsing and washing to drying and inspecting, determines whether the piece meets my standard or gets cut from the batch.

Here is what a production day looks like inside my ice dye studio in York, PA. This is the process behind every one-of-a-kind piece in the ready-to-ship collection.

Step 1: Choosing the Blanks

Everything starts with the blank, the plain, undyed garment. I don't dye on cheap blanks. The fabric quality determines how the dye absorbs, how the colors develop, and how the finished piece feels and fits after dozens of washes. I primarily use Comfort Colors crewnecks and hoodies, Bella Canvas tees, and Gildan hoodies. Each brand has a different weight, texture, and fiber content that affects the final result in distinct ways.

Comfort Colors blanks are garment-dyed, which means they're already been through a dye process that pre-shrinks them and gives them that soft, broken-in feel from day one. When I ice dye over that base, the color penetrates deeper and more evenly than it would on a raw, untreated blank. Bella Canvas tees have a slimmer cut and a smoother surface, which produces sharper color detail. Gildan hoodies are heavier weight, which absorbs more dye and produces richer saturation.

Choosing the right blank for the right colorway isn't random. It's part of the craft.

Step 2: The Soda Ash Soak

Before any dye touches the fabric, every blank goes into a soda ash bath. Soda ash (sodium carbonate) raises the pH of the fabric and opens up the cellulose fibers in the cotton. This is what allows fiber-reactive dye to form a permanent chemical bond with the fiber rather than just sitting on the surface.

I mix the soda ash solution in large bins and submerge the blanks completely. They soak for at least 15 to 20 minutes, though I often leave them longer if I'm working through a large batch. The blanks come out wet and heavy, ready for manipulation.

This step is non-negotiable. Skip the soda ash or cut the soak time short, and the dye won't bond properly. The garment will look vivid at first but bleed and fade within a few washes. I've seen this happen with other dyers' work, and it's the reason I'm meticulous about this step. When a customer buys from me, the color lasts. That starts here.

Step 3: Scrunching, Folding, and Manipulation

This is where the artistry lives. Once the blank comes out of the soda ash, I wring out the excess water and then manipulate the fabric by hand. How I position the garment determines the pattern, or more accurately, it determines the range of patterns that could emerge.

A loose scrunch produces organic, flowing color with soft transitions. A tight twist creates more dramatic contrast and separation between colors. Folding the garment flat produces broad stripes or bands. Bunching sections together creates concentrated pockets of pigment with lighter areas between them.

I don't follow a formula. Every piece gets shaped based on the colorway I'm planning and the effect I want. Some days I'm going for soft watercolor blends. Other days I want sharp, high-contrast breaks. My background in color theory from art school is where this instinct comes from. Years of studying how colors interact, push against each other, and blend at their edges.

The manipulated blank goes into a wire rack set over a bin. The rack holds the garment above the bottom of the bin so the melting ice can drip down and away rather than pooling around the fabric and muddying the colors.

Step 4: Ice Application

Ice goes on top of the scrunched fabric, a thick layer, sometimes two or three inches deep depending on the piece. I use regular bagged ice. The quality of the ice doesn't affect the dye chemistry, but the amount matters. More ice means slower melting, which means the dye travels through the fabric more gradually and produces more detailed pigment splitting.

The ice layer serves two purposes. It's the delivery mechanism for the dye. As it melts, it carries the dye powder down through the fibers in slow, unpredictable rivulets. And it controls the temperature. The cold slows everything down, which gives the dye more time to interact with the fabric and split into its component pigments.

Step 5: Dye Powder Placement

Here's where it gets interesting. I sprinkle powdered Procion MX fiber-reactive dye directly onto the ice. Not mixed into water. Not dissolved into a solution. Dry powder, placed by hand onto the ice surface.

This is the single biggest variable in the entire process, and it's where my color theory background matters most. Where I place each color, how densely I apply the powder, and which colors I put adjacent to each other. All of this shapes the final piece. But the ice adds an element of controlled unpredictability. As it melts, the dye moves in paths I can influence but never fully control.

A single dye color often contains multiple pigments that separate as the ice carries them at different rates through the fabric. A dye called "Boysenberry" might fracture into deep plum, rose pink, and pale lavender. "Jade" separates into teal, seafoam, and golden chartreuse. This pigment-splitting effect is what gives ice dye its layered, watercolor depth. It's also why every single piece is different — even two garments dyed side by side in the same batch with the same colors will develop entirely unique patterns.

Step 6: The 24-Hour Cure

Once the dye is placed, the bins go into my studio and sit. For a full 24 hours. Sometimes longer if the studio is cold, because lower temperatures slow the chemical reaction and I want to make sure the bond is complete.

During this time, the ice melts. The dye migrates. Colors split, blend, and settle into the fibers. The soda ash maintains the alkaline environment that allows the fiber-reactive dye to form its permanent covalent bond with the cellulose. By the time I come back to the bins, the ice is gone, the fabric is saturated with color, and each piece has become something that didn't exist 24 hours ago.

This is the step that requires patience. I can't rush it. Pulling the garment too early means the dye hasn't fully bonded, and the color won't be permanent. I've learned to trust the process and let the chemistry do its work.

Step 7: Rinsing and Washing

After the cure, each piece goes through multiple rinse cycles. The first rinse is cold water to remove the bulk of excess, unfixed dye. Then they go into my industrial washers for hot water washes with a textile detergent designed to strip away any dye that didn't chemically bond with the fiber.

I wash each piece until the water runs completely clear. This is the step most casual dyers skip or rush, and it's the reason so many people have had bad experiences with tie dye bleeding in the wash. If excess dye stays in the garment, it transfers to other clothes, stains skin, and fades over time. My customers don't deal with that because I put in the rinse time here. When you receive a piece from Floorboard Findings, the heavy lifting is already done.

Step 8: Drying and Quality Check

After washing, pieces go into the dryer on a standard cycle. Once they come out, I inspect every single piece. I check for even dye penetration, color vibrancy, any areas where the dye didn't bond properly, and overall pattern quality. Not every piece makes the cut. Some develop muddy spots where colors mixed in ways that didn't work. Some have areas where the dye didn't penetrate through the full thickness of the fabric. Those pieces don't get listed.

The garments that pass inspection get pressed, folded, and photographed. Every photo in the ready-to-ship collection shows the exact piece you'll receive — not a representative sample, not a similar piece, the actual garment. What you see is what ships to your door.

Step 9: Photographing and Listing

Because every piece is one of a kind, every piece needs its own photo and its own product listing. I photograph each garment on a clean background under consistent lighting so you can see the true colors. This is one of the most time-consuming parts of the process that people don't think about. A batch of 30 crewnecks means 30 individual photo sessions and 30 individual listings.

But it matters. When you're buying a one-of-a-kind piece online, you need to see exactly what you're getting. I don't use stock photos or representative images for ice dye. The piece in the photo is the piece in the box.

Step 10: Packaging and Shipping

Every order gets packed in branded packaging: tissue paper, stickers, care instructions, and a personal thank-you. I ship daily, mostly through USPS and UPS, and every package gets tracking.

The packaging is part of the experience. When you order from a small business, especially one that hand-makes everything, the unboxing should feel different from an Amazon delivery. I want you to know a real person made your piece, packed your order, and sent it out with care.

Why Every Piece Is Different

If you've read this far, you understand why no two ice-dyed pieces can ever be the same. The variables are too numerous and too unpredictable: how the fabric is scrunched, how the ice melts, how the dye powder migrates, how the pigments split, even the ambient temperature of my studio that day. I control the inputs, but the process has a mind of its own.

That's what makes this art. Not manufacturing. Art. And it's why I got into this in the first place — the same love of color and unpredictability that pulled me into art school at California University of Pennsylvania pulls me into the studio every morning.

If you want to try the ice dye process yourself, I've written a beginner's guide to ice dyeing that covers everything you need to know. And if you'd rather skip the learning curve and go straight to wearing it, the ready-to-ship collection is where you'll find finished pieces waiting for a home. You can also grab a DIY ice dye box with all the supplies pre-measured and ready to go.