Last
week I was hand dyeing. I've been dyeing fabric for years and
probably all of my quilts have my own fabric in them somewhere. Some
of my quilts are all hand dyes.
Birds of Paradise, 2005 |
The
Trip Around the World series had lots of rounds of hand dyed squares.
The occasional gaps in the colour made me think of them as little
bits of sunshine coming through the clouds. They were an intrinsic
part in making all of these quilts alive and interesting.
I
began dyeing with Procion MX dyes many years ago. I was then living
in Ireland and this meant ordering them from the UK. Then Dylon came
along with their Pure Colour range. They were a godsend: procion based dyes
which I could buy in Cork one jar at a time as they ran out. Perfect
until the product was discontinued.
I've
kept going since then on my leftovers and everybody else's but
finally the fix ran out. So I took a deep breath, didn't look at the
total, and ordered a whole new batch of dyes and soda ash from
Kemtex.( www.kemtex.co.uk an excellent and really helpful company)
I have
hundreds of dyeing notes but it's taken me all week to get back into
soda ash and urea solutions. I'm hoping all my colour recipes will be
the same, and if they aren't well I'll just have a new range of
colours.
I
spent the initial years merrily squirting syringes of dye into layers
of fabrics in jars but eventually I think you feel the need to be
more scientific/professional/organised(?). So now I have colour
charts and can reproduce colours or dye exactly the shade or tone
which I need. Purples, oranges and browns are my favourites. Blues
are still a disaster and that beautiful, clear, bright red remains
illusive.
I've
learnt to re-dye. Think of painting a wall, the first coat of paint
dries a bit wishy-washy but the second one is much deeper. It's the
same with dyeing; dye a second time and you'll be thrilled with the
results.
Fabrics dyed once, on the right, and fabrics dyed twice, on the left. |
Also
in the box is a jar of synthetic indigo. Indigo – even the name is
evocative. I've been dying to try it for years. I have an idea,
possibly irrational, that living in a hot climate should produce
better results. I haven't opened the jar yet as I'm a bit afraid of
letting the genie out of the bottle, I don't think I'll ever stop once I start, but
I have done lots of research on the internet. This all led me to
thinking about dyeing with natural indigo. One web page led to
another and my first seedlings of Japanese Indigo and Woad have just
come up. But that's a subject for another post.
The first tiny seeds. |