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Colour to dye for

Colour to dye for

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When getting my materials together I was often frustrated that I could not get the colours I wanted. This was especially true of silk materials and you had to buy a large quantity to get only a small amount which could be expensive. It was not until my past time of trawling through Youtube videos that a came across the “colour your life, Rae Wollnough” episode. What a revelation. With a very simple process, I could dye not only silks but fibres too.

So I set about getting the materials I needed. Firstly the dyes themselves. I use EasiFix all-in-one protein dye. These dyes work on natural materials like silk and wool etc (I get these from Etsy). These dyes are fixed by heat so no need for a fixing agent. I use a mixture of silk but here I have used a ponge which has a lovely lustre.

Ponge 5 silk

The process is so simple. Cover your table in cling film and wet it with a spray bottle. Place your silk on top, here I have flattened the material out but you can get some nice effects if it’s scrunched too. Your silk must be wet as the colour spreads better and it will burn when heated if it is dry.

Next the fun bit. I use pipettes, brushes or simply pour the dye onto the silk.

Silk wrapped

Once I am happy with the dyeing I wrap the cling around the piece gently patting out as much air as possible. Once wrapped I pop it in the microwave. Only a couple of minutes does a small piece like this. Be mindful to follow the safety instructions of the dyes and only use equipment that is specific for dyeing and nothing you will use domestically.

Once heated I leave the piece to cool completely and it’s this that sets the dyes as well as the heat. This is the worst part of the whole process as I cannot wait to see the outcome. It is not an exact process but the results can be magical.

The piece is rinsed until the water runs clear and it’s done. You can re-dye if you are not happy or think it needs more.

The colour you can achieve are wonderful, the weaker the dye the paler the colour and you can achieve your own colours by mixing also.

Here is a mix of materials I have dyed, silk, silk hankies, throwsters waste. It works equally well on nepps also.
A couple of scarves.

The possibilities are endless and results are well worth the effort as little as it is.

My Felt in the Guild Exhibition

My Felt in the Guild Exhibition

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My  guild exhibition opened on Wednesday. we had a vernissage  Thursday evening.

guild show

I can now show you the hat I have been working on for ages. First I had to make a prototype, modeled her by my son. It was how to make, attach and manage the horns that I needed to work out.

prototype 1 web prototype 2 web

Very Monty Python to me.

The finished hat looks like this

hat on display

I will do a post about making it in the near future.

I also have some pictures in the exhibition.

pictures hanging

 

picture hanging

I think they look great hanging. You can get an idea of how big the Cityscape is in the hat picture, it is in the back ground .

Here are some of the other things in the exhibition.

colapsable weave lace shawl

Collapsible weave scarf and a lace shawl hand spun and knit.

shawl shawl close up

Hand woven shawl and close up of the pattern.

hand dyed, spun and knit handspun and knitting

Hand dyed, hand spun and hand knit. hand spun and hand knit art yarns.

pillows from hands woven fabric mettal weaving

Pillows from handwoven fabric. Hand woven metal wall hanging.

 

 

 

 

Cochineal and Indigo Dyeing

Cochineal and Indigo Dyeing

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Yesterday my friend Linda and I did some natural dying with cochineal and indigo.  She had purchased a kit with several kinds of natural dye stuffs and instructions. We decided on cochineal and indigo so we could get fuchsia, blue and purple. cochineal is easy enough to prepare you boil it strain it and then reboil what’s left  and strain 4 times to get you dye solution. It was a lovely deep pink. you have to mordant your things to use cochineal. For cotton you have to first soaking in  tannin and in then in alum. For wool you just use alum.

mordenting for dyeing

Here are a couple of the pieces after they came out of the cochineal

cochineal dyed stuff.

The indigo is a little more involved to get ready and it stinks. first you make up a concentrate using the powder and chemicals. Indigo is used in an alkaline solution. You stir it together and then have to let the purple solution turn yellow/green.

indgo solution Then you have to carefully, under the alkaline water in your bucket, pour the solution in. You do not want to add any oxygen to the dye bath. Then you have to wait another 1/2 hour or so for it all to goes completely yellow again.

IMG_1456

When you add your wet articles to dye you have to carefully lower them into the bucket so as not to add any oxygen to the solution.

putin bundles in indigo The magic happens when you take things out of the indigo. Even after just a couple of min in the bucket things will start to go blue when pulled out.

start to change when you take them out after 30 to 40 min you get much better colour. Here is some cotton that was tied in knots so parts would resist the dye.

out of the indigo untieing the clothThe pieces that were in the cochineal where a disappointment. when we added them to the indigo all the red disappeared and only the blue took.  We discovered after doing some research that we were supposed to used the mordent for 24 hours. That would be  2 days of soaking for cotton and one for wool before you can start to dye.  a couple of the cotton gauze pieces did keep a little pink

cotton gauze here are the rest

dryingThese have all been in the indigo once

and these twice. The very dark ones are a natural dark gray Norwegian wool.

multiple dippings

The other thing I tried was my hair it has gotten long enough that it is becoming hard to handle so I am going to get it trimmed soon. So I thought why not have some fun with it first. I stuck it in the cochineal and then in the indigo.

and in cochiniel ann in the indigo

Unfortunately the cochineal washed right out in the indigo and the indigo did not take at all. In the end Linda had some stuff called panic manic that she used to give me the purple I was looking for.

hair dye anns hair

This was a fun day but I think I will go back to my acid and fiber reactive dyes, so much simpler to use and predictable results. If anyone knows why the indigo didn’t work on my hair I would like to know. I though with hair being a protein fiber it should work.

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