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!!!

to dye for

I finally mixed dyes and prepared fabric for painting and dyeing. It was a lot of fun playing chemist. I used Melanie Testa's new book, "Inspired to Quilt" for various recipes needed to get fabric and dye ready to create art. I love her book because it gives step by step directions for exact measurements of all the stuff you need to do this. There are many steps! First I mixed the pro print paste, since it has to sit for at least 1 hour before you use it. Dyes are the consistency of water which makes it very hard to paint with so you need to thicken the dyes by mixing them with the print paste mixture. While the thickener was setting up, I made a batch of soda ash, urea, and water to soak my pfd- prepared for dyeing fabric. The fabric has to be prepped to accept the dyes by first soaking for 30 minutes then drip drying. Finally, I mixed up dye concentrates of 5 colors with fiber reactive dye powder, urea, and water. This is how Jay and I spent our 19th wedding anniversary!! What fun.