Dyeing in the Rain Yet Again!

Well, I smartened up this time and reclaimed part of the garage for dyeing today! The piece that got rain soaked yesterday has happily come from the washing out and the dryer and it is okay! I can see that the part that was not soaked by the second rainfall was nice and dark. It is all spotty looking, but that is fine as I like texture. A good ironing will improve it immensely as I found out last night with my so-called "okay" pieces from yesterday. A brisk ironing was all it took to make them look more than acceptable!

Today I am again trying the pallette that I did on that piece with a little bit of an update. I spread sun yellow, golden yellow and a mix of strong orange and mixing red all over the piece leaving a few blank areas. I then took a 75%/25% mix of turquoise and intense blue and covered the whole piece, heavier in some areas than others. I have found that laying a foundation color and then putting color on top brings out the salt tracks. Have a feeling that the MX dyes just love to bond immediately with that fabric if there is no dye on it but when some of the more obvious dye sites are used up, then the colors have to wander a bit, helped by the salt.

One thing I did notice with the piece yesterday is that there are some very dark dots on it where I believe the large salt crystals were sitting enhancing the dye reaction. The rain did a very good job of dissolving almost all the salt that was on the piece, and believe me I use lots of salt. (I recycle the salt also by scraping it off the piece before I wash it out.)

The piece today is just not drying out at all!! Much too cool and damp I suppose so I will just let it be overnight and try to get some more done tomorrow. I am always anxious to see how one turns out before trying another one these days but it will take all summer at this rate. It has just been too rainy these past couple of weeks! It is amazing the effect of the urea if there is moisture in the air -- built in humidity check!