A Dyeing Day

Yesterday was a fun day of dyeing with my friend Dianne.  We each did half yard pieces and used the overdyeing technique where you get 35 different colors with 10 dye baths.  I have posted about this before and it is listed under my "Popular Posts".  I call it Extreme Overdyeing.  

The colors we used left to right were (ProChem names) Sun Yellow, Golden Yellow, Strong Orange, Mixing Red and Fuchsia.  All were about a 3% solution (I don't have a scale so used a tbsp of dye per pot which contained 6 yards of fabric which probably weighed around 600 gms give or take!!).  Fuchsia was only 1 tsp per the 6 yards which was roughly a 1% solution as it is such a disobedient and strong color.  The overdye colors top to bottom were Basic Blue (a red blue -- the only one of the pure blues that is), Mixing Blue, Intense Blue, Blue/Violet (a mixed color) and New Black (also a mix and a 1% solution).  The rest are all "pure" colors, ie., not made up of more than one color.  

Dianne prefers a more mottled look while I like solids looking fabrics and this was kind of a compromise!  I used dry fabrics the first time through (the warm colors) while Dianne used pre-wetted fabric.  Because of time constraints, we didn't dry the fabrics after we washed them after the first baths so I got a lot of mottling of the second color.  We didn't squish them around very much either which increases the mottling substantially!  

We are back to more typical weather here and are expecting 70s this week so that will be nice.  I did get down to Ft. Fisher to see how my birds are doing.  There weren't many and there were several people with the same idea!!

 I did like this Great Blue Heron posing for me in the shallows.

The Pelicans down here are not as prone to posing as they are in Florida where they seem to be a bit friendlier.  This fellow had his eye on me though.  He is beginning to get his pretty gold head here.

And there was one Royal Tern among all the Laughing Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls.