Still Using Up the Leftover Dyes...

It is amazing how long these dyes are lasting.  I basically made a quart ea. of 3 colors -- blue, yellow and fuchsia in a 10% (only 6% for the fuchsia) solution for the monoprinting demo 10 days ago. (Note:  I use 10% solutions as it makes the math so easy for determining depth of shade -- 10 ml of solution will contain 1 gm of dye powder)  In the past, it has become obvious that the higher concentrations do stay unbonded with the water a lot longer -- maybe because of the dye to water ratio.  Anyway, I have now done (in addition to what was used in class) 8 t-shirts, 6 yards of wide cotton knit and four yards of my Egyptian cotton.  I still have half a quart of the yellow and fuchsia left and about 1 1/2 cups of the blue.  Wow!  And the best part is that I really like the colors that these three dyes produce together (sun yellow, intense blue and fuchsia).  They are all the brighter of the pure dye colors (turquoise is probably the brightest though and I haven't used any of that this time). 

This particular combination  is not one of Carol Soderlund's trios of colors  that she uses in her Dye Mixing class (which I highly recommend to anyone who has a serious interest in  controlled dyeing) but I did do many other combinations after I left the class to see what I could come up with - and this was one that I really liked.  I found that using fuchsia and turquoise together in low water immersion in anything but very low concentrations yielded too much separation of color as fuchsia is the fastest bonding and turquoise the slowest.  Maybe I will scan in some of my other results and do a blog on that....


My technique for the last bunch of dyeing is a little different from what I usually do.  I have pre-soaked all the fabric or t-shirts in a warm soda ash solution (dyeing in my basement and even in the summer, this is a necessity).  I then use those plastic tubs used for washing dishes that you find at the dollar store and put two tshirts or four yards of fabrics spread out very evenly across the bottom of each. I then make up cup solutions of about 2% solutions (I know that 20 ml of dye solution will yield 2 gms of dye which will dye 100 gms of fabric to a depth of shade of 2% or medium and then I just add water up to the cup level) of each of the colors (or whichever of the colors I am using) and then I kind of pour them all over, one at a time, smashing the fabric after each addition so that I maximize the distribution of the dye immediately.  I have been really going very, very light on the fuchsia even in its reduced concentration probably never using even a 1% solution as it overpowers very quickly.  The fabrics aren't sitting in big puddles and I figured I would use the timing for dye painting (4-8 hours) rather than the usual low water immersion time (1 hour).  So far, I have been spectacularly pleased with the results.  Some are almost as nice as my snow dyed fabrics.  With consistent 90 degree temps around here, we won't be seeing much of that for a while!  I may play a bit with salt dyeing though and try something a little different -- we shall see.... Turquoise, however,  is the best for this!

This was my very favorite of the fabrics I dyed although I don't think the subtlety can be seen in this image of the two yard piece.  It will be enough for a tshirt for me!

Last but not least are the socks.  I am getting smarter and dyeing them in batches so that I have many of the same colorway so that matching and losing socks is not such a problem!!  They will match my t-shirts as well.  These brightly colored socks even get a laugh from my daughters (after the eye roll of course).