You Just Never Know - Journey of a Dyer!

An art quilt friend asked me to do some custom dyeing for her which I do occasionally (but very selectively). She wanted a very muted beige/brown background with subtle mottling -- she always gives me the photo she is working from as a guide. As I was trying to get up a group of this color myself for the lions, I gave it a first try.

For my dyeing, I almost always use Preferred for Dyeing (pfd) fabric but have found that for lighter colors and overall "solidity", sometimes a good non-pfd fabric will work well -- some of those that have some permanent press finish or some optical brighteners. The finish acts as a resist and you get some nice overall colors sometimes (especially those pesky lavenders that you want to have some blue in). So I decided that this would be a good fabric for doing my friend's request. It was a non-pfd white Robert Kaufman Kona that I got at Joanns. I keep a small stash of the white for my marbling and fabric painting as it performs well in those capacities.

So I went with a pretty low concentration (maybe 2% for bright yellow and golden yellow) on this fabric and then added in Pro Chem's Basic Brown (one of the few "mixed" colors I regularly use). I only added about 1/2 to 1% of this. I figured I would get nice and light. Wrong!! It acted just like a pfd fabric and sucked up all the color and I got a very deep gold color. You can see this in the first picture above!


I knew the above color would not do so took one of my snow dyes to her with which she was thrilled! So now I am left with 6 yards of deep gold, some of which I can use. I had a bunch of the basic brown left (although it has been aging down there in liquid form in the basement) so added a tsp of Deep Black to the solution this morning and poured it over 5 of those six yards. The result is not too bad! There was obviously no permanent press or optical brighteners in this batch! I got good mottling and a lot of very deep browns. These two pieces are the results -- one is two yards and the darker one is three yards.

I have another 10 yards of it all scoured and ready to go. I am thinking some reds and oranges overdyed with browns and blacks. I am doing things a little differently also. I have a couple of big flat boxes and I am scrunching the fabric and covering the bottom of the box. 5 or 6 yards fit easily into one of the boxes.

I am doing LWI the Ann Johnston way with just wetting the fabric (usually I use it dry) and then pouring the dye all over it and then messaging it in. I am of course pouring the dye very unevenly but doing a lot of message to get the subtle mottling but an overall variation in color. I let it sit for 15 minutes and then pour in the soda ash solution and message a little bit. I then weight down the fabric with another box with a bucket of water in it. I really like using baggies as it is easier to squeeze out the air and get overall coverage of the fabric but this is working pretty well! I let it sit for about 2 hours, rinse, wash and iron!

Won't these two fabrics above work really well for my lion's mane? I was planning on doing a lot of piecing but these almost stand alone with lots of stitching. Nah, will still piece!

Putting on My Scientist Hat for a Bit - Back to the Dyeing Board

This is the center of one of my beautiful begonias. What I don't understand is why half the flowers are like this and the other half are huge and have many layers of petals. It is like half the plant is working on being fertilized and the other half is just there for show! The begonias have been spectacular this year

Well, the dyeing table was completely cleaned off and all my full bolts of pfd fabric are safely stored away and nowhere near the furnace anymore. However, I had an increasingly large pile of miscellaneous white fabrics of undetermined fiber (but mostly 100% cotton) and certainly differing degrees of pfd (plain old pfd or mercerized pfd). Some I am sure were leftovers from dyeing sessions (nicely cut into fat halves or full yards). However, there was quite a pile of yardage that I have no idea about.

In addition, there were several bolts of black cotton and some black yardage that I didn't know how well they discharged or what color they discharged to! I even bought some more of those Chlorox pens to test these. Thrilled to find that some of my black sateen (from Joanns) discharges completely to brilliant white! Will have to try the two full bolts I have to see if they are the same. After testing, the other bolts of sateen only bleached to a golden brown -- pretty but not white -- maybe if I leave it in longer....

Now, labelling is my least favorite part of dyeing but label I did! I cut off quarter yards of all the miscellaneous yardage and put corresponding numbers on the quarter yards and on the larger yardage.

I made up a rather large pot of mixing blue (some old powder as I wasn't going for accuracy of color) after soaking the fabric in water first. Fifteen minutes after I had mushed the fabric around sufficiently in the dyes, I added the soda ash solution. None of this was controlled for depth of color.

From my first looks at the fabrics in the washer, a lot of them appear to be pfd and certainly dyeable! There are some I wasn't at all sure about including some polished cotton (whatever they use to polish certainly acts as a resist to the dyes!!). Hopefully I will be able to use those in marbling. If not, they go in the contributions bag. I have quite a collection of "what was I thinking" in there currently. I can't imagine what clothing I had in mind when I bought some of these!!

Well this is the results of my dyeing all arranged as a gradation!! There were about 1/3 that were obviously mercerized and another third that were just pfd and the final third, hmmmmmm.

My biggest surprise was the one below!

This was a stark white (couldn't get it to photo its real color) drapery weight jacquard that I probably bought as a remnant at some point. I have about five yards of it. It dyed as well as the sateen which was the darkest!! It is difficult to see on the piece below but when I iron it, I should be able to clearly see the jacquard pattern. It is really nice fabric! You just never know!!

Besides this happy surprise, I dyed some pieces of linen that I have had for years and it dyed beautifully as well. I also had a piece of cotton twill that dyed extremely well. I was surprised at how well some of my random natural color muslin dyed and may use up that bolt that I bought long ago. It all looked pretty good. The non-mercerized pfd stuff just looked a little duller in color than the mercerized cottons or the sateens. The polished cotton took hardly any color at all. The silk gauze took very little color but that was not unexpected as it is sooo light weight. The cotton interlock I had took very little color and more on one side than the other (curious). The cotton knit I got from Dharma took the color well (like the non-mercerized pfd fabric). I didn't bother trying the rayon as I know that takes dye like crazy!

I never count out the non-pfd fabric. If you want a nice even light color, these work wonderfully as whatever finishes are on the fabric act as a resist. It is amazing to see the differences even in those white on white fabrics. Some obviously have some sort of finish on the front and some don't. You can never tell by looking at them! I really must hit the drapery sections again and see if I can find more of the cotton jacquard!

Very Short Glossary of Fiber Terms, Beth Style!

Well, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about fabrics in general, having been sewing for almost 60 years but obviously, I can be mistaken too as I was in my recent shibori workshop. I did some online searching for some of the fiber and fabric terms we were throwing around quite blithely!

So here goes for my attempt at clarification:

1. Pima Cotton -- pima cotton is a long staple (long fiber) cotton which because of it's fiber length is perfect for making high thread count fibers. However, this doesn't mean any particular thread count, just that the fiber is a special high quality cotton.
2. Pimatex -- this is a brand of tightly woven poplin made by the Robert Kaufman company. One of the "colors" is pfd white which is sold by Hancock of Paducah. It is a firm high thread count fabric that produces nice results.
3. Egyptian cotton -- again, this is a type of cotton (like Pima) that used to be grown only in Egypt but now is grown in the Southeast US. It is an extremely high quality cotton (probably the best) and lends itself to high threadcount applications.
4. Kona cotton -- this again is a brand name sold by Robert Kaufman and is a relatively low threadcount but has good firm threads. It may be made from pima cotton.
5. Cotton Lawn -- this is a very soft, finer quality cotton which is the basis for the Hoffman batiks for the most part. It is most likely made from high quality pima cotton as well.
6. Cotton Sateen -- this is a weave of cotton. The highest quality sateens are made from pima or Egyptian cotton and are combed cotton. It is almost impossible to get the highest quality here in the US but a couple of manufacturers are making a decent sateen these days.
7. PFD or Prepared for Dyeing -- this is fabric that doesn't have any finishes that interfere with the dyeing process. Some of these finishes might include permanent press or optical brighteners. Being labelled PFD does not guarantee that it will give you the wonderful bright crisp colors that you might like. This requires that the fabric also be mercerized.
8. Mercerized cotton -- this is cotton that has been treated with a very strong base during it's processing (seems to me I read that it was lye in combination with some other things). This process causes the fibers to appear to hold more color because of the surface. You can kind of tell if a pfd fabric is mercerized as it has a very slight sheen to it when held in the light. I have found many fabrics not labelled as pfd but which were mercerized and dyed beautifully. I have found others identified as pfd which don't dye well at all!!

There are also many different weaves and thread counts of cottons. I cheated above as sateen is a weave as well as a "finish" which makes the surface highly reflective.

Old damask in many cases makes for a great dyeing surface (check out those thrift stores). Also, if you can find those sheets that were all cotton and made back in the 40's and 50's, they tend to be mercerized as well. Before the advent of optical brighteners, mercerization was the process used to insure you had nice bright whites!

Many times you can find sateen or Egyptian cotton sheets made in India or Pakistan that contain no optical brighteners and therefore dye beautifully. I have found that optical brighteners make the white fabrics look vaguely pale, pale lavender under the store lights. You have to look really, really closely. I have found for some reason that the sheets made in Thailand or Malaysia almost always have optical brighteners!

My personal opinion is that viscose (NOT acetate) rayon dyes more beautifully than anything else. It rarely if ever has any finish on it but is hard to find except from pfd vendors in 100 % rayon. You have to be careful with it when it is wet though as it tends to be a bit fragile. However, any combination of rayon/cotton or rayon/linen that you can find will dye beautifully as well, even if not pfd. When you get the mixes, be careful that there are no permanent press finishes though. I love the 55% rayon, 45% linen fabric from Joann's. It is great for clothing and dyes wonderfully.

Silks dye wonderfully using the same processes. Lighter weight silks will just not hold as much color so a 3mm silk will not be as colorful as a 10mm silk just because there is not as much fiber to dye. Charmeuses and silk blends (with rayon, cotton or linen) dye beautifully using the MX dyes and soda ash. Pure silk can be dyed beautifully with MX dyes using vinegar or citric acid as well.