Dyeing, Dyeing, Not Done Yet.....

Another few days of experimentation! I am trying to amass a selection of tans and browns for the upcoming lions! I sold off the snowdyes that I had created in anticipation of this which is okay. I am trying also to use up my existing dye powders as some are ten years old!! (I must add that I keep them in a cool dark place.) A lot are two to four years old and yes, they work fine but are a bit lighter than before but that is probably better as I have a heavy hand when it comes to dyes!


My plan was to do several gradations using Pro Chem's Basic Brown (one of the very few mixed dyes I use) in combination with yellows and oranges and reds. My gradations are 8 steps and result in OWG of 10%, 5%, 2.5%, 1.25%, .62%, .31%, 1.5%, .o75%. I basically start with 2 cups of dye solution that contain 20 gms of dye powder (about a tbsp and a tsp), dump one cup into the first pot (with one yard of 100 gm fabric), add a cup of water, dump one cup of that into the second pot etc, etc. I have gotten the overall process down with very detailed instructions.


My variation is adding a second color in different concentrations into the pots which will give you the kind of variation that you would see in Carol Soderlund's "rows" or "columns". (I highly recommend her classes for those dyers who want to get serious about color and predictability. You can do this by yourself, however, this would save you months of experiments and gives you a wonderful record of colors at the end.)

I also had a new "pure" dye to play with so had to do an initial plain old gradation using that. It is the "Burnt Orange" from Pro Chem and is is a kind of rusty orange in its darkest iteration and a pleasant toned down (almost fleshtone) in its lighter values. The above picture is the Burnt Orange gradation. I have decided not to overdye it as I do like the color a lot. It is not one of the "stronger" dyes but I can see a difference between the 5% and the 10% concentrations.


I then tried two more gradations -- one with a gradation of Sun Yellow values with the addition of 2% Basic Brown to each "pot". The other was a gradation of Mixing Red adding the 2% Basic Brown to each pot. I loved the Mixing Red/Basic Brown gradation and the Burnt Orange. The Sun Yellow with Basic Brown gives a gold that has a bit too much green in it in the darker values but it is a learning tool.


This is the Mixing Red gradation with the brown. I loved the deep reds I got with this (basically a 10% mixing red and 2% brown and a 5% Mixing Red and 2% brown.)


This was the Sun Yellow gradation with the brown added. It is even more hideous in person as the browns all look green and there is very little variation. These are all going to be overdyed with red today!!

This, however, is the gradation of the week old solution of golden yellow adding only 1% brown this time. I am liking this one a lot.

I only had a couple of yards left so the top one is 2% Burnt Orange and 2% Basic Brown and the bottom one is 2% Mixing Red and 2% Burnt Orange. This looks rather like the scarlet dye I have gotten from Pro Chem in the past.

As we have been talking about moving south permanently, I figure I will get all my fabric dyed (if you remember, I have an obscene amount of pfd fabric) and use up my dyes and paints as best I can. Of course you always run out of one before the other and have to purchase the other, etc, etc! It is amazing how much dyeing I can do in a short period of time so using up even that obscene amount of fabric should be easy!

I separated another 50 yards of fabric last night into dyeable portions!

Dyeing Day - Before

All the miscellaneous stuff that is "fit" to dye is going to be the fodder for yet some new experiments. Some time back, I published directions on how I do "double" dyeing in a "low water immersion (lwi)" gradation. It kind of duplicates the rows and columns in Carol Soderlund's dyeing book but without all the measuring! It basically gives you a gradation from one color to another by holding one color constant and doing a gradation of the second color.

My new experiment will be to try to do this on one piece of cloth instead of the individual pieces of yardage. I am going to start with a four yard piece (about 400 gms) and will put out instructions if it comes out okay. My first attempts will be moving from the yellows to the reds with hopefully some interesting oranges in between. This will all come in handy for my lily piece which requires a lot of shading. We shall see how this all works! My goal is always to simplify measuring and still get okay results. The first one above is the move from sun yellow to fuchsia. I used a constant 3% dye to weight of goods for the sun yellow (ProChem's name) and started with a strongest of 3% of the fuchsia with 8 gradations so it would be 3%, 1.5%, .75%, .40%, .20%, .10%, .05 and .02%. I am going to leave the stuff batching for longer than normal as it is not all sitting covered up in liquid like it normally is -- more like dye painting than lwi. Also the basic blue and grape below do like a little bit longer batching time.

I decided I wanted to try a gradation of grape (a pure purple color of MX dyes) to Basic Blue. Both of these are moderately weak dyes that don't give very intense colors but should result in some nice blue/purples (I hope).

I always liked the calculation part of chemistry but always hated the exactness which rarely got me the conclusions I was supposed to get anyway!! But it did train me to take notes, develop hypotheses etc. The reward of this type of work is that I get a lot of output for relatively little work as compared to the marbling which is very labor and cost intensive!!

Again, I have been sewing as well and two out of the four aprons have been finished. If my sister Gail guarantees that her husband won't see my blog, I will put pictures up! Otherwise, it will have to wait! All these aprons have required something other than just sewing them together!! Two have marbling on them, one is dyed and one has been plasticized by ironing on the Heat N Bond vinyl covering. I bought a whole bolt of this many, many years ago and never have used it. So all sorts of experiments have been going on.

So off to scrub the dyes off my arms before dinner out!