Fabric Dyeing

I spent last week dyeing fat quarters, about 72 if my maths are correct.   I am so pleased with my new stash!  Oh, and the fabric is sitting on a large piece of fabric that I dyed when I lived in Africa, which I now use to cover my print table when it isn't in use.

Using a method I used before, I dyed the fat quarters in disposable plastic beer glasses (dye pots) to get a scrunched look, as I did not want flat colours.

Working my way through my dye colours, I made single colour gradations, to give me an idea of what the colours looked like.  I didn't quite make it all the way as I ran out of fabric!  

With the exception of two colours, each colour was a 6 step gradation.  To try out different strengths, some gradations consisted of 1tsp of dye to 1 cup of water, some were 1/2 tsp dye and some 1/4 tsp dye to one cup of water.  Each subsequent colour was diluted by half a cup of water.  Perhaps the two reds were the wrong colours to choose for the full teaspoon as they took forever to wash out!

In each cup I also placed a swatch, which I later attached to my dye information sheets, so that I could duplicate the colours again.

I only had 12 dye pots, so I worked in batches of two colours, picked at random from the cupboard.  I also had a 'leftover' dye pot, into which I poured the left over dye from each dye session.  As the colours were picked at random, I was interested to see what would happen when the two colours mixed.

Starting from the top left and working down I have the following dyes:

• Boysenberry and Golden Yellow, with the mixed dye pot's result sitting between them
• Turquoise and Fuchsia, with the mixed one in the middle
• Light Red and Chinese Red, with the mixed one between them, on the right

Starting from the top left and moving to the right I have the following dyes:

• Deep Orange and Sky Blue, with the mixed pot between them
• Chocolate and Grape, with the mixed pot in the middle
• Cobalt Blue

It is not always easy to see a clear colour difference between each fat quarter.  If I remove every other fat quarter, the gradations are more noticeable, especially when the fabric isn't folded.

When I made the Chocolate gradation, I used a 1/2 tsp dye, but I was pretty sure that I would need more dye to make a nicer brown.  When I poured the dye into the dye pots, and indeed even in the wash out, I thought it was a really very ugly colour.  However, once the fabric was dry and ironed, I loved it, especially the weakest colour.

This is really fun to do, however, the wash out is beyond tedious.  To get the stronger colours (look at the two reds), you need to use more dye, and there is more dye to wash out it seems.  On average, to get clear water I needed to wash out all this fabric about 8 times (there is 9-10 yards here).  Even the 1/4 tsp dye mixes, which gave a more pastel colour (eg the Turquoise), still had a lot of wash out.  

The other problem with doing such a large batch of fabric and doing the wash out, is that it really hurt my hands and wrist.  I haven't been able to dye anything this week as my wrist is really hurting.  Maybe next time I will chance putting them in the washing machine at an earlier stage in the wash out.