A Day of Dyeing at Dianne's!

Before I came to the beach this year, I gathered most of my pfd fabric so I could get some dyeing done down here.  I couldn't do any this summer because of the surgery.

This is my second day of dyeing and I was experimenting with this new blue -- ProChem's Blue 420 which is a new color and which I am not sure still whether it is a pure dye or not.  It is not noted as such on their website.  I did three gradations using this color in combination with other colors to see if I could recreate some other colors.  I had a day of mixed successes.

This gradation is a gradation of this blue (starting with 6%) with a 3% concentration of yellow added to half and 1 1/2% concentration added to the other half.  It is actually greener than this picture portrays. 

This is the same blue but with a 2% solution of ProChem's Mixing Red added to each step.

I thought I would try adding some Black to Grape to see if I could get a more intense purple.  It was not very successful.  I only used a 6% solution of the Grape and a 2% solution of the black and then gradated them together.  I think the black was just too light and tended toward blue.

This was an error!  I mixed the Mixing Red and the Blue 420 together and then did a gradation of that.  I had meant to add the Mixing red to each gradation and did that in the gradation further up in this blog.  This was Mixing Red (2%) and Blue 420 (6%) added together.

Here they are altogether.  I think my next foray into dyeing will be to do gradations of a lot of the miscellaneous mixed dyes I have.  There are quite a few I don't have documented in my book and I hate guessing with dyeing!
 

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!

Gathering Up the Goodies....

Well, I finally had to make some headway into getting all my hand-dyed "solids" together as I had promised our guild that I would provide some fabrics for our Diamond Anniversary quilt -- yes, our quilt club will be celebrating 75 years of continuous meetings in 2011 and we want to make a special raffle quilt for that year. My hand dyeds were spread all over the place including hiding away in project boxes matched up to commercial fabric for some unknown quilt design! Janet G. picked up 27 yards from my stash with a promise that I would do some gradations of other colors if they need them as they get further along in design. It is going to be a Baltimore Album type of quilt designed by club members.

I must say that looking at the pictures, it looks like I have a relatively modest bunch of fabric but pictures do lie!! Besides this "solid" bunch, I have a couple of very large boxes of prima donnas (those ones that are shiboried, dye painted, snow dyed, salt dyed and sprinkled with colors). Even the boxes of solids look much larger in person and I swear it would be hard to find a color that I don't have at least a 1/4 yard of! I may have to go back to selling a bit of this but at least now I know where my future dyeing efforts should be made (I must add that I have a whole bunch of yellows and oranges already set aside for a lillies quilt I am working on so they don't even show up here!). Anyway for your viewing enjoyment!


This is the box of reds, purples and some oranges and yellows.

This was my blues and greens boxes. All those folded over pieces are full yards with 1/4's and halves hanging about on top. A lot of the greens are also in my lillies box right now meeting up with the yellows and oranges. (I can never have enough greens.)

This was my "neutrals" box. Each of those thin slivers is a full yard of fabric! Lots of grays and browns here. I get a kick out of the browns as they definitely change color dramatically when the light shining on them changes from daylight to incandescent light.


These are the ones I called my earthtones -- as you can see, they are a bit on the warm side. As before, each piece is a full yard at least.


I must say that looking at all this, I think I am going to concentrate on doing some simple brights the next time I do dyeing although I can't help mixing up some earthy greens as well. And here am I also hoping for a bit of snow (no stones thrown at me please) before we head south for awhile! I am anxious to get back to my snow dyeing!

Dyeing Etc., Etc., Etc.......

Dyeing back in session! I had some hideous yellows that needed to be overdyed as well as some of the greens from the turquoise/yellow day. So I gathered together some miscellaneous stuff, did some miscellaneous wrapping and other mechanical resists (clothespins, rubber bands and string). I also added in some upholstery fabric that I had which I figured might dye well as it was part rayon and part cotton and natural colored -- small pieces but would make nice placemats. After I put the resists on, I soaked all the fabrics in warm water long enough so that it would get all the way through. This keeps the inside whiter (or its original color) as the water acts as a resist as well.


I mixed together about a tbsp of deep navy (ProChem 414) and Intense Blue (ProChem 406, I believe). We shall see what happens! I didn't weigh, I barely even measured the dyes but did add a couple of cups of salt into the solution figuring I had about a pound of fabric. I will add in about 1 1/2 cups of soda ash soon as I think there is about 3 gallons of water in the pail. I haul the fabric out of the pail before adding and mixing in the soda ash though. I might try to dissolve it in some water before I do that. Then I will let everything sit for a couple of hours and then voila (I hope!!)


They are in the washer and the first reports are excellent!! The fabric that I purchased for aprons for my BIL dyes beautifully and from Joanns no less!! So (even though I said no more white fabric, just this once...) I will head over and get a bolt of it as it will be great for tote bags, etc. as it is about the hand of canvas -- whoopee! I love when I find new fabric that dyes well!

This is the long one with the rubber bands just holding it together on the fabric which was accordion folded. Very important to use accordion folds so that you get relatively even dyeing.
I am going to shibori this one again using a different pattern.


This was the one on the pole with the string around it as well. It literally looks like four different pieces as it was a whole yard that I folded in half and then wrapped.

This is the one that has the rectangular clothespins along each side of the accordion folds.

This was the the white canvas fabric that I bought from Joanns. It was accordion folded and then the round little clothespins from the Dollar Store were applied. This is definitely my favorite, but of course it was fabric from scratch.

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.

Just One Last Snow Dye and Then No More (Probably)!

We simply didn't get any of the snow that many East Coasters got -- not even a flurry! So no more snow dyeing for this winter probably as I am only home for a couple of weeks and then on the road again.


I did these before I left for NYC and really liked them (hope the camera does them justice). I used navy and an orange made up of a little mixing red and sun yellow -- I was thinking I might get some browns or grays. This is the back of the tshirt. Now this is a great improvement on the $4 tshirt from KMart!



This is the front of the same tshirt. I really like the front a lot. There is a lot of rose -- no orange or navy blue though!

These three pieces are all fat half yards which were part of the 2 yard piece that shared the dye mix with the tshirt. IF we do get some more snow before I leave for NC, I will definitely do a bunch more tshirts!

These turned out to be some of my favorite pieces using this technique. My dyes are about two weeks old now and there is definitely more washout of unbound dye but I am still getting lots of nice color for sure!! Now to wait patiently for some snow!

At Last - New Snow!

Well, I will get to test out new fallen snow today with the snow dyes! I am heading out to scoop up the snow now -- it looks like it will be rapidly replenished the next few days as well!

Hmmm. The new snow is snowball snow (which I think means pretty wet) but it melts in about 1/3 the time that the old stuff did which had been pretty packed down and snowflakes merged together. I just dumped a second layer and some more dye on. The dye actually compresses the snow when you are putting it on unlike the old crunchy stuff (now I got the old crunchy stuff when the temps were in the 40's and it is only in the 20's today). Hmmmm. We shall see I guess! I may even have to scour some more fabric! I am doing 4 yards at a time now. Hopefully I will get something other than just regular chrystally stuff that I can get without snow! This time I went for the warm colors as I was getting tired of the blues so we shall see!! This first piece is a result of the first tries with the fluffier snow. I was a little careless with my colors and am not crazy about it but it has some redeeming qualities!

The remaining pieces were done later in the day and I used twice the snow of the earlier attempts (a six gallon bucket instead of a 3 gallon one). I liked the colors better and could see using them for rocks as there are lots of beiges and grey blues. This was a mix of lots of yellow, a little mixing red and some navy thrown in for good luck!

This final piece is just a closeup of one of the above views. Each of the pictures represents about a piece 23" x 36". The last one portrays only half of that.

Warm Wednesday and the Last of the Snow Dyeing Until More Snow

This is the piece that I finished today which I describe below and show some more detail.






Well, the weather is certainly warmer -- in fact we have a lot of fog coming off the remaining snow. Amazingly enough, the frozen top layer of snow is keeping the snow underneath from melting and it is about the right consistancy for more dyeing. The next three days are filled with time away from home.

Yesterday, I actually got up extra EARLY so I could scoop up snow before it melted and get in another piece. And today I managed to find some more snow and do another!! The results are rather unpredictable to say the least -- yesterday I was going for purple with some blue but threw in yellow at the end so really have no purple and very little brown (thought that yellow would meet the purple) but lots of blue and green with some pink areas that look like large dahlias.

Today, I restrained myself and just went for mostly blues and threw on navy, turquoise and intense blue and just a teense of yellow. I did get mostly blues and may tone down the navy the next time or add a lot more yellow for greens! Because I am starting with just 5% solutions, I am not getting dark darks like I sometimes do when using the 10% solutions. I am unendingly fascinated with how the colors are moving around and bouncing and layering and fading in and out. It is just so different from the usual scrunching low water immersion. Of course there is less control of the outcome as well!!

The good news is that they are predicting snow again tomorrow so I can replenish my twindling supply without having to resort to the snow at Walmarts... (Did I just say good news and snow in the same sentence?)

This is a closeup of the second half of the above piece. This piece was about two yards in length.

I Wish It Were Colder Outside and Warmer Inside

The conundrum....the snow is melting and getting far too crunchy outside to make good patterns but it doesn't melt fast enough inside so that I can get lots of yardage done before it all melts this week!!

The snow I successfully scrounged around for today seems to have worked very well!! It just won't melt as fast as the other icier snow from yesterday!! Oh my... I did use less snow with the piece that I worked on today and it seems to have more overall color but then that could be attributed to nuking for 10 minutes (with ice still in it) rather than the 6 I did yesterday. Again, it was probably a close to three yard piece!

I don't think these pictures do justice to these pieces but they are pretty big and I am standing back away. Each photo shows about a square yard of fabric.

It's Getting Warmer, I am Getting Colder - More Snow Dyeing!

The second batch as you can see turned out just great! I was a little worried as I had left it overnight and all the snow melted and there were some disgusting piles of dirty blue in places but it seemed to wash all out. I was definitely working with lower concentrations for this piece but still LOVE it for its wonderful watercolor quality. I can easily see how I can use this multi-color stuff in my piecing!!

We had 50+ temps yesterday and I see that by the end of the week, we will be in the consistent 40's so the snow will melt -- most of it at least. You know you have the dyeing bug bad (got to add this to my 50+ list) when you longingly gaze at the 8 foot piles of snow in front of the local Walmart....and me thinking I want to spend winter at the beach in the south...hmmm.

This is a closeup of the piece as it is 2+ yards of fabric altogether.

This is a second closeup in a particularly interesting area (I thought).

With all that in mind, I scoured another 17 yards of fabric and am at it again!! This time I made up respectable amounts of the dye and will see with this next bunch what happens with higher concentrations of dyes and a lot more of the blue!!

So I made up Pro Chem's Golden Yellow, Sun Yellow, Intense Blue, Turquoise, Deep Navy and their Blue/Violet so that I would have a little red in the mix. I am guessing that I will get a lot of green but it would be cool if there were some plain blue and yellow areas. I pretty much covered the pile of snow which was very, very wet almost solid ice snow today (very heavy). I knew I would know the 29 varieties of snow before this is all over.......

This is about an hour into the third piece and you can see that already the dye is moving downward through the very heavy thick icy snow. I have the dye liquids sitting on the side where they will stay cool from the melting snow. I waited until what snow was left was all white, took that off and then did the usual nuking and washing.

This is the piece from the above mix. I really liked it. It is amazing how much separated out of the purple/blue mix from ProChem. I love using this particular mix because that happens (it is made up of mixing red and mixing blue which I determined from discharging it and seeing the colors it became). If you mix this color with yellow, you come up with every color in the rainbow when doing overdyeing. This was the top half of a piece that was ab out 3 yards long.

This is the bottom half of the above piece. It is very Monet looking which I love!
This is a closeup of one section of the piece above showing all the colors I got using the purple/blue mix, the two yellows, turquoise and intense blue.

I am awaiting my next iteration now. I had to go to a different part of my yard to collect snow as it was nothing but ice in my old retrieval place. I did find a shadier area where the snow still separated instead of being a solid chunk. Maybe I can get one more in before I have to head to Walmart for their snow.......

This is very sad. I used to hate the heat and humidity but dyeing made me look forward to those days (the dyes love it) and now I look forward to intense cold and snow? Very, very sad -- I must be insane -- but let's just say creative for now...

Snow Dyeing Part 2

Well, the first batch of two yards is done and some more is "cooking" down in the basement. I noted that others did fat quarters at a time but I have found bigger yardage is more to my liking and I can always overdye! This is pretty much the whole piece (some is cut off from the bottom but that is my least favorite part anyway). I would definitely classify this type of dyeing as "snow resist" dyeing as the snow really acts as a resist and allows the colors to hit at different times. This patterning is a LOT different than I get when I just apply colors to scrunched fabric randomly!! Double click so you can see better. I have included several closeups below as well.

To reiterate what I did: I presoaked a two yard piece of mercerized cotton in soda ash and scrunched it up on top of an inverted box set inside another box. I then put about a five inch layer of snow (pretty crusty snow by the way not the light fluffy stuff which would make a big difference I think). I took several colors of dyes at between 2% and 10% concentrations and squirted a total of ten grams worth of dye (so overall I figured it would be about a 5% concentration). I inverted the box as I wanted the snow to melt and the water to NOT gather and pool on the bottom of the fabric. Sitting it on a screen would do the same thing (probably even better) but I didn't have any screen! I let the snow melt most of the way but got impatient near the end and the snow that was left was looking pretty white by now as all the dye had sunk down into the fabric. I literally took the fabric as it was, dumped it into a plastic bowl, put some plastic over it and nuked it for about six minutes (checking it every two minutes). I then washed it out and had very little washout which shocked the heck out of me! I was also amazed at how little transfer of dye there was to my hands when the dyes were very cold. The colors I used were MX Golden yellow, sun yellow, intense blue and mixing red. I did mix up a little batch of the yellows with the blue to get some green. The rest is serendipity!

This is toward the side of the fabric where there was less snow and less dye. The scrunching patterning is clearer here. This was dye that just slid from the middle outwards.

This is a closeup of another side where you can see the scrunching pattern more clearly whereas you can't see it in the middle at all.

This is the middle of the fabric and if you double click, you can really see the effects of the snow resist and what it does to the fabric.

This is about a quarter yard chunk near the top.