Well I conquered brown, now onto black. The first photo was an unsuccessful attempt. As you see the color didn't take very well. It's a nice pewter gray, but that wasn't what I expected when I pulled it out of the dye bath & rinsed it. I thought of over dyeing it, then realized, hey you might have a need for that color so leave it as it & start over.
I knew it wasn't the water temperature since I dyed it inside my warm studio. I added salt, I added water softener, & I added enough dye powder, which makes me think it was the dye itself. It was over a year & half old. So back to the drawing board. I remember seeing on Dharma's website, that with one of their black MX dyes that it works best if you heat the bath to around 130 degrees. I was using Pro Chem's dyes but thought I would give it a try. It worked, check out photo number 2. There is a small hint of dark blue in each of them but I think I can live with that.
If you were wondering, in the first photo from left to right the materials are (before dyed) white on white cotton swirls, cotton velveteen, cheesecloth & bamboo fabric. The second photo, left to right: cheesecloth (one can never have enough dyed cheesecloth), cotton velveteen, the white on white cotton swirls & bamboo fabric.
3 comments:
Wow Tracy what a differnce. It would never have occured to me to use warmer water. I'll have to keep that in mind next time I make up black.
You know, every time I keep coming back to check to see if you've written something new, I'm seeing the grey and liking it more and more.
Its great to see the different types of fabrics and how they dyed. And now you have all those textures to work with.
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