dyeing fabric

Like the rest of the eastern half of the US, it's been mighty cold here in Asheville! We've been having temps under 32' for weeks now, with many days at less than 15', so I haven't rushed into the cold, dark basement before today. We've got a week of warm weather ahead of us so I finally got into the basement and dyed my first 3 batches of fabric. I only had enough dye to do some turquoise and deep navy, so I ended up doing 2 batches of the turquoise and one with turquoise and deep navy together. It was a lot of fun, once I got off the protective mask I wore while working with the dye powders. As I breathed, it fogged up my glasses and drove me crazy.


It was a lot easier and tons more fun than I thought it would be. After some stumbling around, I got a bit of a routine together. First, I scrunched up the fabric into the tubs. I set them aside and measured out my dye concentrate for each batch on my nifty new digital scale. Way Cool! Then I made up 3 separate pints of the soda ash mixture, one for each batch, and I was ready to apply the dye.

I applied the dye, scrunched the fabric a bit, added the soda ash mixture, pushed down on the fabric to be sure the soda ash got into the batch, put a lid on the bucket, and set aside.

Then I waited, and waited, and waited some more. I actually waited too long for one of the batches. I wanted to have 2 shades of turquoise, but I left the lighted batch to sit too long, and while my eye can tell there is a slight difference, you folks out there won't be able to see a difference. My favorite batch was the one I dyed half and half- turquoise and deep navy, and then I put some deep navy in drips on top of some of the turquoise. It came out great!

I'm going to try some red/orange and tangerine next. Yummy!!!