Dyeing a gradient with Procion MX

Lots of dyeing = little blogging!

The chemist has been tie/ice-dyeing her heart out. So nice when you can go home and leave the washout to someone else..On the other hand it is wonderful to mix dyes and have someone to hand you clean utensils all the time! She took all the pics on her phone, so I will have to browbeat ask her to do a guest post some time. It is so interesting the difference between us. She is all about the folds and I am all about the color!

Lemon//Grape gradient

Here is a gradient I dyed with lemon yellow and grape, both pure colors. It is magical to see how the ambers and browns emerge in the middle of the range. None of these are colors I particularly want to reproduce, but is was good to see what happens.

To dye a gradient figure out how much total dye you will use for each piece of fabric, based on the weight of the fabric. See Paula Burch's invaluable site for information. For convenience let's say 60ml total. Determine how many steps you want in your gradient. Divide 60ml in half, 30ml, and that's your midpoint where you are adding equal quantities of each color. Parse out the rest of the graduations based on how big a color step you want. You also now have a recipe for each step. 

If you liked any one of these colors, but didn't like the range, you could now try adding black or water to the recipe for the color you liked to make tints and shades. I like to use a bigger gradient normally, as I am interested in where the color starts to change. Sometimes it takes several steps, but with some of the stronger colors even a touch of the second color pushes the first color in a whole new direction. Infinite possibilites, so little time! Of course when making a shade with black, the black you use will influence the color. There is a good exploration of the undertone of blacks here.

Here is an example of a ratio creating a 7 step gradient, with 5 mixed and 2 pure samples.L is lemon yellow and G is pure Grape. Each time you are changing the ratio by 10ml or 1/6. 

60L
50L:10G
40L:20G
30L:30G
20L:40G
10L:50G
60G

Dyeing thread or yarn with Procion MX dye

Here's how I dye yarn for couching.

On a piece of shelf liner (Bed, Bath and Beyond has the widest I've found so far) put separate patches of dyes in the colors you wish to use. My stash is short on blues, so that's what I'm dyeing here.

Preparing to dye yarn

 Remember how we organized the yarn so it wouldn't be a tangled mess after dyeing? You can see the synthetic wool I used for tying. It will not take the dye and will make it easy to untie the bundle after dyeing. The yarn is already soda soaked. In fact it is dripping wet. I find that soda saturated fiber takes the dye best. If it is dry it will take a great deal of dye to get good coverage.

 Now I take my gloved hands and mix and mingle the dye as desired to make the colors I want in the yarn. I prefer to work with small amounts of dye and add more as needed, since the soda ash from the fiber is going to be all over the work surface. This will contaminate the dye, so I don't want to put any dye back into my dyestock as the soda ash will start reacting with the dye stock. What's on the shelf liner stays on the shelf liner! Once I have the colors I want, it's batch and wash as normal. I tend to handwash the yarn as I don't want felting, and since I use it for couching it's ok if it's not as colorfast as the standard I hold my fabric to. Commercially dyed variegated yarns and threads tend to shoot for a one inch change in tone/color, so I aim for that too. Ish.

Yarn dyed by pulling the colors together from pools of dye concentrate

Dyeing mercerized fabric - worth it

Sometimes I buy JoAnn Fabrics muslin to dye, mainly because it's cheap and they have amazing coupons. But if you look at the difference below, you have to ask if cheap is really worth the price.

The mercerized fabric on the left has taken the same dye recipe so much more vibrantly and with so much more texture.

The mercerization process is pretty brutal for the poor fabric. It is given a bath in caustic soda, which causes the fibers to swell, increasing the surface area, and thus enabling them to accept more dye. Mercerization also makes the fabric stronger, gives it added luster, and makes it pre-shrunk to some limited extent (Of course this process also  leaves a nasty chemical mess to be disposed of).

Fabric pots for putting things in - super easy!

A favorite Winnie-the-Pooh story in my house is the one where Pooh discovers that it is Eeyore's birthday and no one is celebrating. Pooh and Piglet rush around and find him presents, but Pooh absentmindedly eats the present of honey on the way, and Piglet falls down and pops the balloon he was bringing Eeyore. When presented with an empty pot and a tattered balloon, Eeyore finds he has both a pot for putting things in, and something to put in it, and is uncharacteristically happy! There is something very satisfying about a pot for putting things in.

The chemist and her dad are off to South Africa, and I am resisting the urge to fill their suitcases with presents to take. I saw this awesome tutorial for making a fabric pot for putting things in, and am busy making some. They will be unfussy travellers, and light to boot, so perfect. They are pretty quick to make, depending on how much stitching you add. You cut and sew 2 squares and fusible batting, which I finished with hand-dyed thread, fold, sew the 4 seams, hand stitch the pockets and you are done!

You can make the pot as subtle or as wild as you like!

And I chose to make each button decoration different.

See the light shining through the needle holes? Couldn't have got that shot if I was trying!

It was fun to play with the Sweet Sixteen again, it's been a while. It made doing all the free-motion stitching a doddle.

If you widen the base size, then increase the size of the triangle seam or you end up with a very floppy end result as there is no peltex or timtex in this pot or bowl or box or whatever you want to call it.

What not to ask someone to take on an aeroplane for you, or no, I cannot take your canary's ashes to be interred in the land of its fathers...

The chemist is traveling to South Africa on Thursday. I was there in November. Most of our family is there. Suitcases bulge with presents. It made me ponder some points about the etiquette of asking if someone could take an item with them on a journey. Most people understand that it is hard to be separated from one's near and dear, and the chance to send them something to let them know you are thinking of them and missing them is rare and special. Most people are only too happy to do someone a favor. Unfortuately, sometimes ignorance or a lack of common sense leaves the traveler feeling abused, and less willing to be helpful in the future.

In the interests of fostering happy travels I offer the following musings:

If you want to send an item with the traveler it should be

LIGHT
COMPACT
UNBREAKABLE
UNOOZEABLE
UNWRAPPED
ABLE TO BE JETTISONED WITHOUT GUILT
ABLE TO BE DELIVERED EASILY


1. Space, space, space. If you don't travel a lot you may not think like a seasoned traveler. An international travel allowance is around 20 - 23 kg or 40 - 50 lbs. For a 2 week trip, this can get used up surprisingly fast. Someone once gave me around 15 kg of used children's clothing to give to someone in South Africa. I am not a charity. I am a traveler. I have my own luggage which I need to transport. If you wish to send a lot of things, or something very bulky, feel free to use FedEx.

2. Security. No one wants to end up in a small room with a man putting on a rubber glove in a meaningful way. Airlines have virtually no sense of humor about items which may constitute a threat. Anything you send needs to be unwrapped. However much you would like to cover your gift in ribbons and bows, the person who is transporting it needs to face stern TSA personnel and swear that they are familiar with everything in their luggage. Educate yourself as to what cannot be safely transported and don't send it!

3. Self-contained. No one wants their clothes to smell like your item, be covered in your item, or be colored by your item. Do not send those cinnamon pine cones, the scent of which penetrates your very skull. No Tennessee fire water. No home made jelly. If there is the slightest chance your item may cause issues, wrap it very well in clear plastic.

4. Delivery. The onus on making sure the item reaches its end goal is on you. Do not expect someone else to spend their vacation trying to connect with total strangers to deliver your gift.

5. Make it clear that should the item be lost or damaged, or should it prove impossible to deliver the item, you give full permission for it to be donated to someone else, or put in the trash with no hard feelings at all. Do not ask someone else to transport a priceless family heirloom.

6. Timing. Let the traveler know well in advance that you would be delighted if they would be kind enough to donate a corner of their luggage to you. Do not pitch up the night before they leave and begin showering them with items to fit in. Do not see them off at the airport and expect them to start squeezing things in for you.

All of these points also apply to people who are going home after a trip. It is terribly kind of you to want to give me a gift, but mainly I am delighted to see you, and would rather have a drink with you than be given a bottle of wine to take home.

Kudos to my extended family who give some of the most thoughtful small, light presents ever! Your compassion and ingenuity is much appreciated!

Dye color chips - storing a record of dye experiments

Don't you hate it when you have a brilliant idea that turns out to be a dud? One of my new year's resolutions was to have less trash leaving the house. Consequently, when I wanted to create "paint chips" from my dye samples, I turned to my ample supply of trash cardboard. Political adverts on good card stock, the cardboard sheets that separate cat food cans, etc. etc. I had cardboard in spades. I spent an afternoon carving it up into usable 2" squares, neatly shaving off a piece of my finger in the process. Apparently scalpel means sharp.

I wound about 40 fabric swatches before the father of the artist reminded me that the artist would strongly disapprove of this project on the basis of acid in the cardboard which would discolor the fabric over time. I suggested that next time he might say something sooner...My recycling project lay in ruins. Then I remembered that I had some 50 sheets of stiff vinyl I bought to make stencils with my Cameo. That endeavor ended in a lot of bad language and leftover vinyl. Recycling back on!

"Paint chip" MX dye samples - fluff from batting

There are lots of pictures of people online who make wonderful color sample books, gluing intricate little squares into clean, white pages. I'm pretty sure that if I tried that it would look like a glue factory had exploded across Pigpen's sketch book. Plus I like to play with my color swatches, I don't want them nailed down. Also, when you do low water immersion dyeing, the range of color across the sample can be quite dramatic. If you are were going to pick a little square to represent the dye experiment below, then which little square would you choose? For me it makes more sense to be able to see the range of color across the fabric.

Previously I pinned my samples onto poster board that had been covered with batting. I lost the feeling in the tip of my finger for about a week after all that pin pushing. The problem was the poster boards took up a lot of space, and the cats took great delight in pulling the samples off. Also, the batting deposited gobs of fluff on the samples.

New plan: roll the strips around vinyl (which is awful for the environment, I know, but this was already bought and paid for, so might as well use it, right?) and secure with tape. There may be some discoloration around the tape over time, but it will be very limited. Also, no more pin holes

These dye chips can now be stored in a much smaller space. I can pull them out and play with them as 2" chips, or I can open them up and see the full range of color across the sample. The "recipe" is written in indelible ink on plain muslin, fused to the top of each sample, and cross-referenced in an Excel spreadsheet in case I drop the sample into a different color...true story....Each sample also has a unique number on it, so I can easily put them back in the drawers when I am done playing. The chemist and I spent several days sorting the colors. It was quite satisfying once, and would make me crazy to ever have to do it again. Colors I particularly liked are named and easily identifiable with a large paper clip. Not as pretty as those sample books, but more suited to my way of working. 

Some 2000 samples now fit into 4 drawers

And the cats do not have opposable thumbs so they won't be able to get into the closed drawers. The day cats evolve opposable thumbs will be a bad day for human kind, and quilter/dyers in particular!

Chocolate scented gloves

Who in the world thought up that one???

I was looking for some rubber gloves. It upsets me no end the number of plastic gloves I go through when dyeing. I found some at Marshalls. I love Marshalls. It's like a lucky dip every time. These are shocking pink Casabella long gloves. Perfect for washing out fabric. I will probably always use the thin plastic gloves for manipulation, just because they give you so much more control.

I was happily wearing the new rubber gloves, feeling like an environmental champion, when I became aware of the smell of chocolate. Cheap chocolate, not Lindt.I was in the basement. I am very picky about not eating or drinking around my dyeing area. I decided I was losing my mind (again). Eventually I figured out it was the gloves. This smell just doesn't come out. The gloves spend their lives in water, and soda ash. They still stink like poor quality chocolate.

Can't you just imagine some fresh-faced little intern in the product development meeting? How can we make our gloves more marketable? People don't like washing up and cleaning. How, oh how, can we make people love us? The intern puts up a trembling hand and suggests that since everyone loves chocolate, if we make the gloves smell like chocolate then everyone will love the gloves? Reason and logic fly out the window, the intern is promoted, some poor chemist is tasked with impregnating rubber with chocolate scent, and voila!

And now I live in hope that the smell will leave someday soon....