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Bengala Dyes by Guest Artist Cathy Wycliff

Bengala Dyes by Guest Artist Cathy Wycliff

Comments 15 comments

Our guest artist today is Cathy Wycliff aka Luvswool.
Over the past couple of years, I have been experimenting with different kinds of dyes. I started with Wilton icing gels, playing it safe for my first experience. I moved on to acid dyes, with the encouragement of Forum members, and I was delighted with the bright, beautiful colors.

Then I tried dyeing with natural plants, like madder, logwood, and osage orange. I ended up with some beautiful dyed wool. Marilyn and I brewed an indigo vat last summer, dyeing everything from lace curtains to wool and T-shirts. This summer I experimented with eco-printing and had some success, but a few failures as well.

When I studied Saori weaving in Minneapolis recently, my instructor, Chiaki O’Brien, also introduced me to Bengala dyes.

They are natural dyes made from the soil in Japan. I was excited to try yet another type of dyeing. I had the trial set of three colors–pink, orange and gray. I liked the idea of natural dyes, already prepared in liquid form, and non-toxic with no boiling water and no mordants. Following is my pictorial on two sessions of Bengala dyes.

I dyed some cotton, linen, silk ribbon and a silk scarf to see if there were any difference on how each dyed.

Session 1

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Session 2

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If anyone is interested in using these dyes, they are available for purchase from Saori instructors throughout the world.

In the USA, you will find them here: saoristudiofun.com/bengala-dyes/

Otherwise, you can google “Bengala dyes” and find offerings from other parts of the world, including Japan, where they are made. I know for sure that Australia, Canada and the UK have the dyes available from Saori instructors. The dyes are particularly
useful when dyeing with young children.

Thanks Cathy for sharing your experience with us about these Bengala dyes!

Dyeing for Special Projects

Dyeing for Special Projects

Comments 17 comments

On the Felting and Fiber Forum, I had mentioned doing some dyeing for projects and Zed encouraged me to write about it.

I’ve had a couple projects in mind that I needed specific colors in silk and wool and needed to mix colors to get the shades I needed.

The first one was for my daughter in law for a wall hanging.  More about this next week. This one I used a dye bath for silk gauze, silk roving and merino.  I also threw in some Corriedale to have on hand. I washed the silk gauze in synthropol an soaked it and the silk roving overnight in a vinegar bath.  I soaked the wools in a vinegar bath for about a half hour before dyeing.  I didn’t need too mix colors for this job. It was an Idye mix I had made a couple of years ago.  I wasn’t sure if it would still be ok, but it worked well.

I was pleased with the results and got the exact shade I needed.

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The second project I wanted to try mixing browns,  greys and a green with acid dyes for another project. Here are a couple of my color tests.  I’m not sure where the rest went I had quite a few formulas I tried.

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I used saran wrap, a squirt bottle and a sponge brush to apply the mixed dyes to the pre-soaked silk pieces.

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I used merino pre-soaked in vinegar in baggies and steam for this one.  I thought I had saturated the fibers enough and rubbed the acid dye into the fiber.  However, while it was in the steamer and left overnight the dye settled in spots.  I expected the mottling on the silk which was fine.

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However, all was not lost.  After running the grays through the drum carder the colors were perfect.

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Stay tuned for more on this project later.  I ended up only using the gray wools, then making prefelt for the project.  I will have to think of another project to use the silks and the browns.  I did use some of the green wool as well which was fine as it was.

I find it interesting to mix colors to get a specific colors, some times it works well, others not so much.  How has your experience been mixing dye colors?

 

 

Dyed Poppies

Dyed Poppies

Comments 14 comments

I recently wrote about this piece because I couldn’t get the blue dye to stay in my green mixtures for the leaves of the poppies. I solved that problem by adding Dye-Na-Flow paint.

Poppies with Wet Paint

This is what the piece looked like when the paint was first applied. I did add a bit more black paint to the centers after the green had dried. I heat set the paint with an iron and then washed the entire piece in the washing machined.

2 Yards of Poppies

This is nearly the entire piece. It is hard to take a photo of because it is so big. It is 2 yards of silk. And it finally has some green.

Poppies with Green

I haven’t decided what to do with the fabric. Perhaps make pillow covers? Any suggestions?

Poppies Close Up

I like how it turned out even though it took a bit longer than expected!

 

 

Mysterious, Disappearing Blue Dye

Mysterious, Disappearing Blue Dye

Comments 34 comments

My local surface design group doesn’t meet in the summer months but we had a challenge for over the summer. Each of us was to use surface design techniques on a 2 yard piece of silk. I can’t remember exactly what type of silk it is but it is very heavy and not really suitable for nuno felting. So I decided to try some dye techniques on the silk.

Someone on the forum posted a technique using plastic cups to direct the dye to look like flowers. I couldn’t find the link and hadn’t really paid that much attention to the technique other than you use cups, put the fabric in the cup and pour the dye into the cup. So I decided to try this and go for the look of poppies. The first step with the red and orange dye went very well (sorry, no photos) and I ended up with very large flower like dyed areas on the silk.

The next step was to over-dye to get a green background. I used fiber reactive dyes but the first set of dye had been mixed up at least a month ago. I mixed yellow and blue to get a light, sage green. But the blue disappeared and I ended up with a golden-yellow background.

Green Paper Towel

So I decided to try again and mixed up a new, dark green dye. You can see on the wipe up paper towel above, that it was dark green. So I soaked my silk in soda ash solution for about an hour, laid the silk out on plastic still wet and applied the green dye with syringes. I didn’t really try to make exact leaves as I wanted to keep it fairly abstract. I also added some black dye into the center of my “poppies”. It looked great when I finished. I rolled it all up in plastic and let it batch for 4-5 hours.

Silk - Not Green

But then when I rinsed it out, all the blue in the green mixture washed out. I am back to very little green and a whole lot of golden-yellow in the background. This shot probably shows the most green in the entire two yards of silk. Sigh.

Green on Shirt

This photo doesn’t show the colors well but I used the remaining dye on my work shirt. It stayed nice and green. So it wasn’t the dye. It seems this silk somehow doesn’t like blue. Weird. So back to the “drawing board”. I think the solution is paint. I will use Dye-na-Flow paint on wet fabric to achieve the dark green leaves that I have envisioned for this piece. I’ll let you know how it goes. All these steps I’m sure will be worth it in the end as it will give it more depth. Or so I keep saying to myself.

Fixed Tea Cozy

Fixed Tea Cozy

Comments 21 comments

If you remember my post about the tea cozy that went wrong, and-then-it-all-went-wrong I have now fixed it. First I had to needle felt the pieces that fell off, back on. I only needled the middles so I would still get the cracked mud effect. The hardest part was placing the pieces in the right places.

needle felted 2 needlfelted peices

This is what the inside looked like.

neddle felted inside

The next step was to tape it all again. I didn’t want the edges to felt down flat.

adding the tape

I did trim the pieces that were touching so they would not felt together again. I rewet the whole thing and started fulling.  Lots of rolling on my washboard to get it well shrunk and stiff enough.

It turned out really well.

finnished finnished 2

 

And a better angle so you can see the texture.

finnished 4 finnished 3

 

so disaster averted and all is well. Now I am back to getting ready for the Twist festival this coming  weekend. Twist    If you can make it make sure to drop by and visit me in booths 57 and 58.

 

 

 

Naturals and Dyes

Naturals and Dyes

Comments 19 comments

I laid this wall hanging out about a week or so before I got time to felt it, and I think it ended up being ‘upside down’. I wrote down the wools and fibres I used as I laid it out, but I think I forgot a few! Also, I added a few locks to the bottom just before I felted it, but I’m certain that was originally the top:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI added some pieces of hand-spun yarn I’d made mostly from bits left over from carding, I spun them quite thickly, and didn’t do anything with them after wards, just wound them onto card. This one is on the row of white Chubut, a ‘new’ to me wool I got from wollknoll, which felts so nicely and looks really nice too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThese are some cotton fibres: cotton top, cotton fibre and cotton nepps on carded Portuguese Merino, with some soy staple and carded Gotland.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve been dyeing some cellulose fibres recently too for taking to the Makefest at the Science and Industry Museum. I’m getting the hang of it now, but I don’t think my first lot of fibres turned out as nice as I’d like. I did some Viscose fibre recently, and this turned out really nice. These are some of the reds, oranges and yellows:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd some yellows, greens, blues and purples:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI don’t like the way dyeing cellulose fibres wastes so much water with the rinsing, but it is easier for me to do large amounts than it is with acid dyes, not that I had much choice, even mixing up just 500ml each of red, yellow, blue and black was more than enough to dye about 200g of fibre and I had to look for other things to dye so as not to waste it 🙂 I tried dyeing Kapok fibre too, that stuff is practically impossible to wet, it seems to form a ‘skin’ around itself, so dyeing gave some interesting results as it behaved the same way, and when the fibre was separated, the centre wasn’t dyed. This is some rose and lilac coloured kapok:

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Dyeing Some Silk and Some Farm Life.

Dyeing Some Silk and Some Farm Life.

Comments 18 comments

I have a couple of ladies coming for a class in nuno felt at the end of the month so dyed a few pieces of silk to add to what I have so they have a nice variety to choose form. I am using the low water immersion method form Paula Burch’s site. http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/lowwaterimmersion.shtml  I made collages of the dyeing. You stuff the silk tightly into a jar and then add some dye. The pictures are the dye with the stir sticks so you can see the colours and then of the first dye poured over, then the second so you can see what it looks like. They have to sit for an hour then you add the sodium carbonate.

peach and fire red
peach and fire red
pink and turquiose
pink and turquiose
emerald and black
Bright green and brazil nut
Bright green and brazil nut

This is them hanging to dry.

scarves drying

And then dry. You can see that the colours are better when they are dry but I am still not happy with the emerald an black far right.

silk dry

I also wanted to share some farm life, not sheep I am afraid. These are my chickens getting to look at their new outside pen and true to there name they are chicken to come out. With some time and coaxing they did make it outside.

chickens going outsidechickens going outside 2

We also got some new baby chickens and turkeys. They come in boxes delivered to the local farm Co-op. The boxes are divided into 4 inside so they don’t over crowd each other to much. There are 2 boxes of chicks and one of turkeys

chichens in boxes

These are the turkeys, they are about a week old and have started to get feathers.

turkeys

These are the chickens, they are day olds. My son is taking them out of their box.

colin and chickens

They are very cute little yellow fluff balls with legs when they arrive.

Dyeing with Plants

Dyeing with Plants

Comments 22 comments

Our guest artist today is Cathy Wycliff (Luvswool).  She shares her adventure into dyeing with plants.

Recently I went to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas for a two-week artists’ retreat. My plan was to spend two whole weeks felting with some time out for photographing the natural beauty of this area (think NW Arkansas, closer to Tulsa OK than Little Rock, AR. ) I also contemplated doing some natural plant dyeing, but it was the wrong season for collecting some of the natural plant materials in the area, such as oak galls and walnut hulls. I ended up ordering some botanical material from The Woolery, which amazingly arrived two days later!

While awaiting delivery, I got going with natural pine needles from the huge pine tree growing in the backyard. I snipped about two dozen clusters and began boiling them, later adding the white wool (domestic 56’s). The ending color did not jump out and grab me, but still I was pleased with the natural beige color which the pine needles produced–and a bonus was that the smell was heavenly.

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Once my dyes arrived, I got to work rinsing and mordanting the wool (all of the wool I used was domestic 56’s from RH LINDSEY.) I began with madder, but this was quite a lengthy process of soaking the wool for over an hour, then mordanting the wool by cooking the alum and cream of tartar. Later when everything had cooled down, I then added the madder and wool.

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Each dye I used required this lengthy process, and unfortunately, I had only one usable pot. After the first wool was dyed in madder, I changed the composition by adding iron, which developed a deeper color of red/orange.

I continued with the logwood as above, also developing a second shade of purple by adding iron.

IMG_0522Overnight drying time was needed, and here you can see the pine, madder and logwood drying in the kitchen.

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I continued with osage, which achieved a golden color, not orange as is sometimes possible.

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Next you see the osage and deeper shade of logwood drying.

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Although I have done other kinds of dyeing previously–including indigo, food colors, acid dyes and even beets–natural plant dyeing is a whole new level of dyeing. I began thinking about the Native Americans and their use of natural plant dyes, as well as other very early ethnic groups around the world who had no other choices. And they didn’t even have gas stoves!

I was pleased with all of the results, which you can see here:

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Left front –pine needles; Left rear  — osage; middle two shades purple  (+ iron), Middle rear — osage, Right —  two shades madder (+ iron); Right front —  cutch

I am looking forward to additional dyeing this summer, and perhaps even growing some of my own dye plants.

Thanks Cathy!

Carding some Wool and Making some Felted Soap

Carding some Wool and Making some Felted Soap

Comments 14 comments

After I dyed my wool last week I had to recard it into batts. I have to do this because it became slightly felted during the rinsing process after dying. I have to rinse a lot more than some people because I have hard water. It doesn’t matter if I use a little dye for soft muted colour or lots of dye for strong bright colours.  To recard the fiber, I strip it down into thin ropes. I feed the ropes into the carder. I have a large electric carder but you can do this with a small hand operated drum carder too. I have in the past. I am sorry to say that yesterday I took a nice long video of the carder working but it has disappeared from my phone.  All I have are a few still shots.

Carder This is the carder and infeed table. They are in my nice new studio space. It is all by itself at the moment until I can get the rest of my stuff sorted and my husband can finish the electrical work.

wool in strips carder batt end

Here are the strips on the infeed table and the batt coming off onto the storage drum. I do feed the wool through twice as the first time it is still a bit stripy in density . I separate the batt into thin layers and feed it in again.  I end up with very nice batts.

finnished batts These are all a little less than 100grams/3.5ounses. I used them to make some felted soaps. I tear off a piece of batt and wrap it around the soap. I add a wool stripe or a piece of silk hanky and then pop them into the toe of a nylon. When I have a bunch ready I sit with an audio book and wet felt them all.

soap felted 2

Here they are all ready to go in their nice bright spring/Easter colours.

I am starting to feel like spring with the longer day light hours we are getting. it puts me more in a mood to be felting.  I would feel more  like spring if there wasn’t  still a couple of feet of snow on my lawn. I am however thankful I do not live in the Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada . They have had 16 feet of snow in the last two months the last being just a few days ago. I am sure they feel like spring will never come. Are you feeling like spring? Or perhaps you are in the southern hemisphere and are starting to feel like winter is coming?

Dyeing Wool with Rit Dyes

Dyeing Wool with Rit Dyes

Comments 38 comments

When the Michaels store opened in Kalispell, they had a grand opening give away. You spun a wheel and chose a prize. They didn’t have very many prizes left when I got there but they had liquid Rit dye. I decided I would choose that for my prize, one for me and one for my husband!

Rit Liquid Dye

Then it sat at home for nearly 6 months. I needed to dye some wool and Ann’s recent post reminded me that I needed some brighter colors. So I thought I would experiment with the Rit Dye and see how it worked on wool.

Roving Into the Pot

I got out my dye pot, filled it up to 2/3 with water, added the full bottle of fuchsia colored Rit dye and a couple of glugs of vinegar. I heated the dye up to steaming and then added some mixed 56’s wool roving.

Roving Ready to Steam

Here it is ready to steam. I put the lid on and had the stove on low heat. I left it that way for 30 minutes.

Red Nearly Exhausted

The dye exhausted pretty well. Better than I expected actually. And the color was a nice red.

Red Before Rinsing

Here’s the wool before I rinsed it.

Blue to Blue Green

Then I did the same with the turquoise Rit dye. You can see the original color on the paper towel. I already had a bunch of blues so I decided to go for a blue-green. So I added a little bit of yellow acid dye. Not much but I didn’t measure.

Dark Green

And here is the pot ready to heat.

Green Didn't Exhaust

This one did not exhaust as well.

Green Before Rinsing

And this is green, not blue-green. I guess I added a bit too much yellow. But I think part of it was the wool took up the yellow dye better than the blue.

Blue Green Merino Fleece

I then had a small amount of merino fleece left which I threw in the pot. Now that’s a better blue-green. Once I rinsed all the wool, the Rit dye held well. And the colors stayed nice and bright.

Yellow Dye Pot I did a few more pots of dye with acid dyes.

Bright Spring Colors

And here is the result. Lots of bright colors for my stash and to make more cat toys.

Up Close

So if you want to try the liquid Rit dyes with wool, they will work fine. Just add in the vinegar and you can get some great colors. It’s not the dye I use all the time but hey, it was free.