Category Archives: Dyeing

Seeing Orange

Posted on by under Dyeing

I know, it’s supposed to be seeing red. But today I’m seeing orange. I needed orange decorations for a purse I am refashioning and I had found some little crocheted pieces at the thrift store. They were white and actually had some sort of glue in them when I bought them. I just soaked them in water and that took care of the stiffening agent. Today, I dyed them orange and since I had some extra dye, I put in a little fabric as well.

 This photo about blows your eyes out – the orange is really bright.

Here’s one you can see a little better. I’ll show you the bag after I finish.

 This photo is of 90# cheese cloth. I dyed both pieces of fabric in a baggie.

This piece of fabric is a combination of silk and cotton. The way it is woven, it has silk on one side and cotton on the other. I’m sure it will look more interesting when it has been ironed.

I spent most of today working on a new blog/website on WordPress. I am going to move this blog as soon as it is finished. It will be much more up to date than this blog. I wanted to have all my blogs/websites in one place so I decided to go with WordPress. I hope to have it finished in the next couple of weeks. I will let you know the new address. I appreciate all my followers/readers and I hope that you’ll like the new site.

Where’s the Purple??

Posted on by under Dyeing
I needed to dye some 30/70 wool/rayon felt for my upcoming stitch class. My initial plan was to dye a rich chocolate brown. We will be using the felt to make beaded books and I was planning on using gold beads. Luckily,  I remembered that this type of felt loses a lot of color when dying with Procion dyes and the brown might not have been recognizable. So I decided to go with red violet and violet.

 Here’s the felt after the dye was applied.

 I made several pieces in case I didn’t like one of them. And I went really dark because I didn’t want pale colors. Since this is a mix of plant and animal fibers, it is hard to get the colors to take well.

 This is the first piece I rinsed out. Eeeeek! It’s pink. Not at all what I wanted. It batched for four hours.

 Here is it up against one that hasn’t been rinsed. The blue just washed away. So I left the last two pieces for 48 hours before rinsing.

As you can see, the bottom two pieces still have a little purple left. But not at all what I was hoping for. So I decided I would put the felt into a blue acid dye bath. I redyed them for an hour simmering in blue dye.
I am still  unhappy with the result. It is a bit more purple but closer to maroon. At least it’s not pink. I may have to resort to Dye-Na-Flow paint if I really want purple. I still have to fuse a layer of organza to the surface so perhaps I’ll go with a really dark organza and that will solve the problem. My hands are all blue but the felt isn’t, sigh.

Dyeing Day

Posted on by under Dyeing, level 2 stitch class

 I spent most of the day yesterday dyeing 24 scarves to sell at the store. I used Procion MX dyes and actually they were a bit old. The colors were not quite as expected but still nice. I like to use fiber reactive dyes because you don’t have to steam them but I don’t like how much you have to rinse them. The acid dyes are really nice because the dye exhausts and you don’t have to rinse out all that extra dye.  And then of course there is the ironing part…

The other thing I did yesterday was to free motion machine stitch this tree on tulle. I then cut it out and stitched it down to a piece of linen. This is part of my homework for stitch class. We have also been working on “botanicals”, sketching flowers and leaves and then stitching them on the machine. I’ll show you  more soon. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Friday’s Dyeing Session

Posted on by under Dyeing, threads

 For my stitch class, I needed to do a dyeing session at home. I usually only use acid dyes since I mainly dye wool and silk. For the assignment I needed to use Procion MX Dyes. So I mixed up a set of dyes and here I am about to start. You can see my color notebook on the left where I was working out different color combinations.

 I dyed a bunch more cotton threads and here they are all rolled up in plastic batching. I did try dyeing some wool thread and using vinegar to soak instead of the soda ash. Ann (Shepherdess) had suggested it. I’ve tried the wool thread with Procion MX before but soaked in soda ash and they don’t turn out very well. But this worked, they aren’t quite as bright as they would be with acid dyes but they still have a lot of color left. Before, I always ended up with very pale colors.

 Here are some of the fabrics that I painted. These will be used for our stitch samples. I dyed linen, muslin, cheesecloth, commercial felt, silk organza, burlap and cotton organdy.

 Here are the threads after rinsing and drying.  I wanted more purples and greens to round out my colors of thread that I now have.

Don’t you just love the colors? The turquoise one at the bottom left is the wool thread. Now I just need to iron all the fabric and wind all the thread into balls.

Level II Hand and Machine Stitch Class and a Surprise

Posted on by under Dyeing, fabrics, plastic fiber, threads

 I started the Level II Hand and Machine Stitch class at Gail Harker’s last week. The first two and a half days was spent in the dyeing studio. Gail has just moved recently from Oak Harbor to LaConner, Washington. Her new studio is wonderful and we had a great time. I won’t discuss the10 hour drive from Montana to Washington with two Yorkies who both had Giardia. The less said about that the better!

 Here are some other class members hanging up their dyed fabric and threads to dry. It looked like colorful prayer flags all around the room.

 Here are some of the threads I dyed after they were dried. They were waiting to be wound up with a thread winder. Normally, we wind the thread on half of a toilet paper tube but they didn’t have many so I only got two in class.

 Here we are at the table discussing something. We worked on hand stitch this session and I have lots of homework to do. We’ll be working on Kantha stitch on our next session in February.

 Here are some photos of my dyed fabrics. We will be using these over the entire course of the class. This is silk organza. We used Procion MX dyes. I usually use acid dyes at home but I’ll be ordering some Procion MX as it is part of the homework to have another dye session.

 This is cheesecloth – #50 and #90 weights. A lot heavier cheesecloth than the kind you buy in the grocery store around here which is #10.

 This is linen.

 And muslin.

 And then white burlap.

 Here are all the threads I dyed on their cardboard tubes. I finished winding them at home. We used all cotton threads in a variety of weights.

 Don’t they look yummy?

 I need to dye some deep purples and perhaps some more greens. So more thread to come!

 When I got home I found a package from the UK. Zed had sent me samples of nylon and plastic fiber to experiment and add to felt. Thanks Zed – it was a wonderful surprise to find this package waiting for me when I got home.

And look at these wonderful buttons she makes out of polymer clay. I can’t wait to add them to something.