Been busy dyeing.

I am getting ready to take an exploration into selling my fabric in June at a local guild meeting.  I am excited and a bit nervous.  I have had some good feed back from people at the guild on how much they like my fabric.  Now, I hope they will like them enough to purchase some.  But, in any case - I have been having a great time dyeing the fabric.  When I get to the ironing stage, it is quite exciting to see how the fabric has turned out.  Look at this pink, it has some great texture/patterning:

I have been playing with how much liquid I leave in the fabric after I soak it in soda ash solution.  This pink was soaked then spun in the washer to get most of the liquid out.  I can see that the patterning is somewhat different that when I just squeeze out as much water as I can after soaking it in soda ash solution.  

This is a range from yellow to a redish orange (each fabric has a different formula for the colour)  I am going to bundle it as a group.  I think this would make a great Bargello Quilt.  Will have to do up some designs and sew it up this summer as an example of what you can do with my fabrics.

Here is a different view.

I have also done a gradient of orange:

Each of these fabrics has the same formula for colour, just a different concentration of dye to fabric for each step.  The yellow and orange play well with each other.  Again, this is very low water dyeing and the yellow has broken out of the orange.

Not as vibrant as the yellow to red above, but just as pretty.

Playing with colour

Since I got back from my colour dyeing course, I have been dyeing a lot of fabric.  My goal this month is to get 50 to 75 meters of fabric dyed for an event in June, that I will have a table at.

I am really happy with this yellow/green gradation.

I am bundling them up as a unit - 

I have some orange and red gradients soaking/rinsing.

Today, I set up to do some teal -

I have measured out for 6 different values of teal.  I soaked each meter in a soda ash solution then spun them in my washing machine to get most of the water out.  I then added the measured dye to a volume of water I wanted for each value, so that each meter go the same amount of fluid, the only difference was the amount of dye available for each meter of fabric.

I also did a 6 step gradient of indigo -

Again I added water to bring up the volume to my desired level for low water dyeing.  You can see that each beaker has the same level.

You can also see the fabric soaked with the teal in the background - These are currently in a warm place batching.  I will rinse them tomorrow after work.

Will post the pictures of them after they are rinsed and ironed.   I have plans to do a purple and a plum later in the week.  By next weekend I should have 152 fat quarters done.

Before the end of May, I should have 75 meters of fabric dyed.  This will mean I have to purchase more fabric, but watching a roll of white fabric turn into all these fabulous colours is exciting.

Scott.

Colour Mixing for Dyers!

Last week I was in Fall River, Mass taking a workshop at ProChemical and Dye,  Color Mixing for Dyers by Carol Soderlund.  From when I first started dyeing I have heard that this was a workshop I should take.

I left early on Saturday, April 21st to drive the 9 hours to get down to Fall River.  It took me a bit longer – I stopped at several quilt stores to have a look around. I then went to Boston Sunday to have a look around.  I found that of all the places I have driven, Boston had the worst drivers.  I spend the day looking around and doing a bit of sight seeing. Then drove to Fall River and checked into the hotel and tried to get a good night sleep for the first day of the workshop.

Monday morning got to ProChem early and grabbed a table up front to make sure I had a good seat.  The rest of the students arrived and we met Carol and got going.  The morning was a bit of introduction and a direction to the workshop.  Monday afternoon we got into dyeing.  Adding labels to layer cakes of PFD fabric.   Water, salt, and dye were measure, buckets were set up, soda ash solution prepared and away we went.

Yellow variations were done Monday afternoon,

Red was added (over dyed) Tuesday morning

Then Blue was done Tuesday Afternoon. (Look at those colours)

Look at all the colours that were produced.

The stacks of each colour family were cut up and distributed for our colour reference books.  I have two more envelopes to go before my book is complete.

Thanks Carol and it was wonderful working with the other students in the workshop.

I could not wait to get another colour family done,. So I have the yellow set dyed and will get the red added tonight.

If you have a chance to take this course I would highly recommend it. Not only because  Carol is a great instructor, she has put together a wonderful method for learning about colour and setting up a great reference.

I have a feeling I will have many colour families done in the next few years, using all the fabrics I use for my dyeing.