Take a Dash of Brown or Black and Add.....

It was a "full speed ahead" dyeing day for Marcia and I today -- the first day of Daylight Savings and we were feeling the effects! Instead of doing our usual dyeing/overdyeing scenario today, we decided to try some gradations from one color to another. For any of you that have taken Carol Soderlund's classes, it basically is kind of creating the rows or columns in the "book". You basically are holding one color constant (same concentration) in all the baggies and doing a gradation of a second color. Today we decided to use yellows and oranges primarily and overdye with Pro Chem's Basic Brown (one of their mixes which is one of the very few mixes that I ever get) and ProChem's Black 608 and 609 (deep black). We threw in a couple of other variations which we thought would give us some browns. Of course we did get some surprises. Each of us dyed 40 yards of fabric for a total of 80 yards altogether -- a very productive day!!

The combinations that we tried (I will use Pro Chem's names here) were:

1. Sun Yellow at a constant 2% with a gradation of Basic Brown with the deepest concentration being 2%, then 1%, .5%, .25% and .12%.

2. Golden Yellow and Basic Brown (same as above)

3. Strong Orange mixed with Navy (414) starting with a 2% concentration and gradating down to .12%. In this case both colors were part of the gradation.

4. Strong Orange and Black 609 the same as (1.) above.

5. Strong Orange and Navy Blue the same as (1.) above

6. Lemon Yellow and Blue/Violet (Pro Chem) as (1.) above

7. Navy Blue/Sun Yellow and Black 608 as (1.) above. I mixed twice as much Sun Yellow and Navy Blue to give me a deep green.

8. Basic Brown and Black 609 as (1.) above.

We did only a five step gradation as we were starting with a pretty light concentration of the gradated color (2% and 1% with a couple of the blacks). We put in 2 yards of fabric in each "pot" for a total weight of about 250 gms. We used 5 cups of liquid altogether (water and dye concentrate) and then added 2 1/2 cups of soda ash solution after the fabric had been sitting in the dye solution for about 15 minutes. It worked out that the 5% dye concentrations I was using were equal to about a cup per pot so we started by putting 4 cups of plain water into each pot. I usually make up my dyes in either a 5%, 6% or 10% concentration depending on what I am doing! I don't add salt to the water when making the dyes (I use urea water to get good dissolving of the powders) but I do use a smidge of salt in the water I add after the solutions are made. I use dry fabric scrunched up nicely as this will also give you better overall coverage (if that is what you want). We do quite a bit of squishing as well.

We were really going for some dark darks today as well as some lights, golds and always browns as we can't get enough of them. Turned out we got some lovely grays as well.

Rather than publish the pictures again, take a look at Marcia's blog at:

http://www.decampstudio.com/2009/03/40-yards-of-fabric.html

The truth is that I haven't even finished ironing them yet!!

Well, since it was very confusing, Marcia forgive me, but I copied over two of your pictures!
This is reading right to left, top to bottom, greens made with navy and tangerine overdyed with a weak solution of black, basic brown overdyed with a weak solution of black, orange overdyed with navy and orange overdyed with black.

These are reading right to left, lemon yellow overdyed with Blue/Violet mixture, orange and navy blue mixed together and a gradation done, sun yellow overdyed with Basic Brown and Golden Yellow overdyed with Basic Brown all described above.

I suspect that my black was a very weak black and that at least some of the orange was a weak orange (the one used in the gradation where I combined it with the navy and you get the grey gradation). In the past I have found that a 2:1 of navy to strong orange gives you a pretty nice blue grey. I usually get a deep chocolate brown with a 1:1 navy and strong orange so that is why I suspect that it was a very old orange and didn't have its previous strength. The Black 608 that I used for overdyeing was a weak concentration but also had aged a bit on my shelves. With black, I like to go light as it can really muddy up colors badly.