Ombre Dyeing II - the Results

Well, I just had to take a picture of this bug I saw on the hibiscus in the front yard. It was just too colorful. It was only about a centimeter long. I have absolutely no idea what it is and don't remember seeing anything like this before! (Update: this is the scarlet and green leaf hopper and is not something we want on our hibiscus!)

Finally made one last attempt at getting the piece done for my art quilting friend. She had picked out a beige color from my swatch book and wanted a gradation on one piece of cotton (about a yard sized piece) to go from that beige to a lighter beige ending in a yellow. My first attempt ended in the ugliest piece of fabric I have ever dyed but was retrieved by a quick overdye in blue.

Today, I took a piece of non-PFD Kona cotton, didn't prewash -- wanted every kind of finish possible to resist the dyes!! I painted the whole piece (which was ironed and dry) and a medium thickness print paste and let it sit for about 15 minutes). Last night I had made up the requested color (7 parts golden yellow to 1.4 parts intense blue and 1.4 parts mixing red). I also made up a 1% concentration of tangerine (one of my very favorite "pure" colors). After the print paste had covered the whole piece, I painted it with the pale tangerine (the whole piece). After I did that I started at the bottom with about a 2% solution of the mixed color, painted a bit, thinned it down to about 1% and painted some more. I continued to thin and paint until the whole piece was covered with some of the mixed solution.


I waited until the piece was just about dry and then painted Afterfix over the whole thing and let it sit for an hour, then rinsed. I don't know whether it will be pale enough for her (I think this Kona may have been mismarked as it dyed really well as opposed to what I was expecting and what I have gotten in the past with non-pfd Kona). It certainly is a gradation from beigey brown to soft yellow and I will find a use for it if she doesn't want it. You can still see brushstrokes but I think it is more interesting that way myself. We shall see.

For some reason, it was very difficult to take a picture of this piece of fabric. It looks much better in person than in any of the pictures I have taken -- don't know why that is.


This is a picture of the piece sitting on my dye table. The streaking isn't on the piece but is what remains of color on the piece of poly fleece that it is sitting on -- very distracting!



This is the piece after it is done. I am sure it will be too yellow for her but I am done with this as it is not at all interesting! I think it actually looks better in person than in the pictures as the contrasts don't show as much.


Just more flowers from my garden which loves all the rain we have been getting.



The roses will get a chance to relax as it is a little cooler. There is just a profusion of color everywhere these days.

Ombre Dyeing Cotton

There has been unbeknownst to me a new trend in clothing -- those with a gradation of color across one surface of the garment as in a dress that has a bodice that is white on the top going through the greys and being black at the waste. There has been some talk of this on the Dyerslist which is my favorite dye listing.



So, it seemed like the proper thing to document how I do this "ombre" dyeing on cottons. All of the references I found on Google showed how to do it on silks with acid dyes. With acid dyes, if you want the solid colors, you would most likely use a pot on the stove. You can gradate the color by allowing part of the fabric to sit in the dye longer than other parts of the fabric, just holding part out and dipping down to get some color. It is not that difficult to get the gradation. I have also done this with a skein of yarn as well. When doing the yarn, I kept part of the yarn in the original dye bath for the longest and would slowly lower the yarn and add a bit of water as well.



An art quilting friend commissioned me (I really don't do commisions except as a favor to friends) to create a taupey gradated single piece of cotton 45" x 60" inches. First I did a normal gradation to show her a series of colors so that she could pick out the one she liked the best (she bought all those too!). She picked one and I created several cups of dyes in different gradations of the one color. I then pretreated the fabric with soda ash. In this case I didn't use pfd fabric but used a commercial moda white which does have some sort of finish on it. The finish inhibits the dyes from taking quite as quickly (wouldn't be good if you wanted a really dark gradation as it doesn't dye with the intensity of the pfd cottons). I also painted the whole piece of fabric with a print paste mixture. This will also inhibit the dyes from taking quite as quickly. I then started painting the fabric with those large Japanese brushes you can get from Dharma Trading as they hold lots of dye. I painted as rapidly as I could from light to dark so there would not be too much of a line. I then let it sit for about 8 hours at 70 degrees and washed it out.



I currently have another "commission" outstanding to do this with two colors -- also pale. This time I will probably use the direct dyeing technique of mixing the soda ash with the dyes at the time I am applying them. This recipe is 4:1 bicarbonate of soda to soda ash. I hope this will slow down the process a bit more.




This is the final piece that was done with the fabric I dyed. The quilt is called Swamp Angel and was done by quilt artist Caren Betlinski. You can see all the ribbons it won in our local quilt show! It also was accepted into Paducah AQS show the following year. She used all my hand dyes in this piece and then did extensive thread painting which is her signature style. I always get a big kick out of seeing my fabrics in the various artworks of my friends. When I was selling from a shop a few years ago, occasionally I would see people with a quilt with fabric that I recognized as mine and that would give me a big kick as well!