A Dyeing Day with Dianne and Becky

What a fun day of dyeing I had on Monday at friend Dianne's.  I wanted to do some gradations to fill in what I had in the way of colors down here, especially wanting some Basic Blue and Purple.  This was a gradation of Basic Blue with a 3% solution of Grape added to each step.  I was surprised at how much the purple changed the darkest of the Basic Blues.  Basic Blue is the only one of the Procion pure colors that tends towards red rather than green (turquoise, intense blue and navy are all tending to green).  A little like fuchsia, the Basic Blue hits really fast while the Grape acts more like the yellows or turquoise and tends to spread more evenly.  There is a lot of mottling.

I also did a straight gradation of Basic Blue.  This fabric makes the best skies.

Here are the two sets next to each other.

 I  had bought some blanks from Dharma this summer to make some dresses, t-shirts and blouses for my granddaughter who is 8.  The first was my favorite of the dresses -- it is a cotton velour and is perfect for her.  I basically just laid it out slightly scrunched with the bottom two garments and put turquoise on the top, intense blue in the middle and then grape on the bottom hoping for somewhat of a gradation.  I added the soda ash later as I wanted a more gradual look and not the highly mottled look you would get if you had soaked them first.  I should have washed the garments before dyeing as they repelled the dye at first and I had to do a lot of squishing to get the dye all the way through.  The second and third garments are just a cotton knit and dyed okay but not as bright as the velour.

Hard to see but there is smocking on the very top of this blouse.