Experiments are fun things, especially when they have unexpectedly nice results. Today’s testing was trying out some Procion MX dyes on silk ribbon samples to see how well the dye struck and whether the materials from this particular supplier would be any good for creating my own range of colourful silk ribbons for embroidery.
Maybe it’s the dour dark nights of winter drawing in already but I’ve been finding myself really craving working with fibre. It’s been a struggle not to cast something new one the needles, but I have had the wheel out and some delightful yak for a bit of sampling work I hope to share soon. Somewhat dangerously, I did end up going to the virtual Indie Untangled Trunk Show, which is probably what inspired the current bit of dyeing.
One of the many, many things I like about dyeing, dyes and dyed objects is they make fantastic photography subjects. Maybe that’s because, for me, a load of coloured splodges in a suitable colour scheme are high art and that combination of things is really the essence of dyeing.
I was going through my fabrics, looking for some scrap to help frame up some embroidery, when I came across some old ice dyed fabrics I made a while ago and was struck by how nice they were. What is also very rewarding about ice dyeing is that it is very straightforward to do and, if you want to, you can just prep things somewhat arbitrarily and enjoy the ‘randomness’ of the results.
Oh summer, where hast thou gone? The bright mornings and the long evenings, not stumbling to and from work in the dark, and the general piece and quiet of being in a city that seems to lose a significant proportion of its inhabitants over the summer vacation… All gone… Seemingly in an instant. As I’m doing most of my dyeing outside now, it’s probably also coming towards the end of dyeing season and the start of needing the daylight lamp for any fine embroidery work. I think I start to understand why some people are seasonal silk shaders, it’s much easier when you can actually see what you’re doing!
Sometimes simplicity is best. After my last batch of dyeing, I’ve been trying to work through various colours to create a ‘palette’ to be able to spin from. The nice thing about dyeing top for spinning rather than dyeing a skein of wool directly is that this still leaves a huge number of possibilities for colour blending and mixing at different stages of the process.
Oh how I’ve missed splashing around with colours and silks. It has been far too long since I’ve had fun playing with dyes, partly out of fear of destroying my deposit for my overly white apartment. The colour scheme for most of the paint isn’t even magnolia, beige or cream, it’s brilliant white and therefore completely unforgiving on all things dirt or dye related… If anyone would like to preempt my future problems and has any advice on removing dyes from surface where it is not supposed to be, please offer away!
After trying some ice dyeing and really enjoying the results, I though I’d give a try to a combination of speckle dyeing and painting. Normally I tend to dye fibre to spin but it’s a little bit hard to maintain defined spots of colour in the spinning process, plus, while handspun definitely has it charms, there’s a lot to be said for the near perfect regularity of mill-spun yarn.
I’ve recently discovered the joys of sprinkle dyeing, where the dyeing process is reduced to 1) soak yarn at required pH, 2) dump powder dye directly on yarn, 3) fix dye as necessary. No solutions, no mixing, no syringing. I can actually clean up in less than five minutes after sprinkle dyeing, ideal for a busy schedule, dangerous as I am now drowning in very lurid sock yarns with no time to knit socks.
While roaming around Pinterest one day, I saw some interesting looking fabric that had been dyed using a technique known as ‘ice dyeing’. The name sounds a lot more glamorous and complicated than the technique actually is. All you do is dump a load of ice on your fabric, put powder dye on the ice and wait but, for such an easy technique, the patterns it produces are actually very interesting.
While discovering that Procion MX dyes are very happy to dye wools, I came across something else that gave me pause for thought. Although there’s not a wealth of information on using Procion MX dyes with acid, most of the advice that is out there says you need to steam or heat the fibre after applying the dye.
For acid dyes, heating the dyebath is standard practice to help fix the dyes. Fibre reactive dyes, like Procion MX, don’t require this, which is definitely an advantage when trying to do large bits of tie-dying. The standard advice when working with fibre reactive dyes on cellulose fibres and silks is to do your dyeing, then leave your fibre damp with the dye on it for at least a good few hours, closer to 24, if you want strong colours.
As I tend to like very intense, saturated colours, I tend to err on the side of giving the dye a longer reaction time. For some short-sighted reason, I’d always assumed that there was some kind of degradation of the Procion dyes at higher temperatures, hence leaving them to react at ‘room temperature’ but seeing as steaming the wool lately with Procion dyes had worked just fine, that obviously couldn’t be the case.
Was there really a way to go speed up Procion dyeing so I didn’t have to wait so long to see what wonderful mess I’d made?
astitchornine 