Dyeing and the Studio

I am sorry to say that no one wrote me a note with a story of quilts and healing, so there was no winner for the last blog give-away.  I was surprised since I often hear these stories when I travel.  I have my own story, which I have shared in most of the interviews I've given, and the UTube videos on this blog.  So I'm not sure if folks felt it was too private to comment publicly (which I understand), or it was too much work for a book you might not win anyway, or the book wasn't of interest.  So I shall hang on to it for a future opportunity.

I'm home all winter, so trying to plan ahead for busier days.  Just take a look at the state of my studio!  There's that tree on the design wall that I just blogged about.  Stacks of fabric dyed and ironed, boxes with teaching material, and a tray of bark created for tree collage.

There's a messy stack of fabric that includes the snow dyes with too many white spots that I am going to overdye, and a stack of fabrics tried for backgrounds to the tree that now need to be put away (wherever "away" is).

I've been doing lots of dyeing!  I was low on dark darks, so did some of my favorites.  Those of you who have taken my new "Dye Another Day" class have created some fabrics just like this!

I also dyed a bunch of fabrics in one of my favorite combos at the moment: dark brown and purple.  This time I also tried adding brown (which tends toward the rusty reddish side), and it added a wonderful addition in the second last piece from right.  The piece at right was a happy surprise.  At the end of the dyeing session I had a bit of brown and some navy left, so combined them on a half meter.

I tried snow dyeing one more time.  This time I dyed two pieces of fabric on the screens I showed in my last post on snow dyeing.  This allowed me to spread the fabric out a bit more, in the hopes that there would be less white spots.  There are still lots.  Fabric at left used a medium concentration, fabric at right a light concentration.

But the colours bring back to my memory some photos I took in autumn at the Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa (by the way, this cemetery is a beautiful place to photograph in any season). The pink hydrangea were just hit by frost and turning a bit brown.  I love the colours.  I wonder if I could use the above fabric somehow to create something like this? I think I might have to keep these fabrics, and thus my fabric stash continues to grow!

Dyeing Adventures: To Snow Dye or Not to Snow Dye?

Recently I saw a small work by an artist that made use of vintage crocheted lace that she had hand-dyed.  It just so happens that while sorting through some of the "stuff" in my basement, I came across a box of hand-crocheted doilies, tablecloths and lace that my mother made when she was a young woman.  I am not the lace and doily type, but look at what a transformation when the doily gets dyed with my favorite colour chartreuse!!!  I have a lot more of these, but want to wait until I figure out what, if anything, I am going to do with them before I dye them.

During the months of January and February I am not travelling, and only have weekly local teaching, so I am completing a lot of projects that really need to get done.  I am also taking some time to dye some fabric for my own work.  Last week I dyed about 12 meters of multi-coloured fabrics in earthy/neutral shades (browns, sickly greens, golds, etc., and yes I happen to love sickly greens ;-)).  I had in mind more fabric for end-of-season hostas. Gosh I love these colours.  I am really happy with the results, and I love how the colours mix into each other and blend from one to another.  I will keep what I want for me and the rest will go into my "store".  I think it is amazing that after 11 years of dyeing I can still feel the magic.  

I think these three are my favorites!

For many years now I have been using my stash of commercial fabrics as backings for my quilts, but I've now run out of yellow-greens and golds large enough to back a quilt.  I found some cotton in my dyeing dungeon that wasn't as premium as the one I use for my usual hand-dyes, and dyed a few backings for my next several quilts.

Now to the snow dyeing.  Almost exactly two years ago, I conducted an experiment to compare the results of regular low-water immersion dyeing and snow dyeing.  I made a summary and posted photos of my results here.  I didn't like the white spots that were often present in my snow dyed fabric. This year we've had lots of snow, so I was itching to try again. I figured that if I use less concentrated dye solution (and therefore less saturated colours) the white spots wouldn't bother me so much.  So in half of my snow-dyes I used a medium intensity (1 tsp. of dye powder per cup of water), and in the other half I used a light intensity (1/4 tsp dye powder per cup of water).  I also tried two methods.  I found a piece of strong nylon netting and used bulldog clips from the stationery supply store to clip the netting over the top of a kitty litter pan.  I scrunched four meters of fabric, that had been soaked in soda ash solution for at least ten minutes, and placed them on top of the netting.  I packed snow on top (sorry I forgot to take a photo when the snow was packed on top), and then poured the dyes over. This photo shows the fabric after the snow has melted.  Because the fabric is raised from the bottom of the pan, it is not allowed to sit in the dye solutions and melted snow that gather and mix in the bottom.

Method 1: fabric is held up by a piece of netting clipped to edges of the pan.

I dyed another eight meters using the regular method, as outlined here, with fabric sitting on the bottom of the pan, in the mixed liquid.

Method 2: Fabric is allowed to sit in the liquid resulting after the snow melts

As soon as I started rinsing the dyed fabric, I felt the disappointment.  Too much white because the dye wasn't able to get into all the scrunches. There is a lot more left to chance with snow-dyes.  With my regular low-water immersion method I usually manipulate the fabric to make sure there are no white spots.  One can't do that when one is pouring dye across the snow that is packed on top of the fabric. You simply can't get at the fabric.

Here you can see some results using the second method, where the fabric was allowed to sit in the dye solutions. Less crystal patterning and huge dead white spots.  I am actually contemplating overdyeing some of them in a weak solution of yellows or a pale neutral.  That will sort of pull all the colours together a bit.

The ones dyed on the net are by far the nicest and have interesting patterning.  Not the kind of fabric I usually use in my work, but quite interesting.  I'll keep these.  They have a loose watercolour look to them. I've posted my two favorites.

While I may be a seat-of-the-pants dyer, mixing up colours and throwing them around, I am still able to produce pretty much what I want, and even sometimes better than what I had hoped.  After my second adventure with snow dyeing I still feel that it leaves too much to chance.  However, I am curious to know what would happen if I squeeze the fabric in the dye liquid after the snow melts, and let some paler colour settle into the white areas?  Hmmm ... or maybe I'll stick to what I do best ... low-water immersion.

What about you?  Have you tried these methods, and which one do you like best?

A Comparison of Low Water Immersion and Snow Dyeing

Low water immersion on left, snow dye on right.

With all the talk of snow dyeing I've been hearing lately, I decided it was finally time for me to run a little experiment to see the difference between snow dyeing and low-water immersion dyeing. So, I mixed up 6 cups of dye solution in 6 colours (terracotta, butterscotch, golden yellow, hot pink, chino brown, and a mix of half olive green and half dark green) to dye 6 meters of fabric. I used a full concentration of 1 Tb of dye powder per cup of water per meter of fabric. Yes I use urea. In all of the photos above, the fabric on the left was dyed using my usual low water immersion method while the fabric on the right was dyed using the snow dye method. For the snow dyes, I soaked dry fabric in soda ash solution for 10 minutes, wrung it out and scrunched a meter of fabric into the bottom of each container, then piled about 4 inches of snow on top. Several colours of dye (totalling about one cup of dye solution for each meter) were then poured across the snow. For the low water immersion fabrics, I started with wet fabric, poured the dyes over, and then poured a cup of soda ash solution over each. Here they are batching in my dungeon, er I mean basement.

My conclusion? I was surprised to find that the intensity of colour on the snow dyes was pretty much close to that of the low water immersion dyed fabric. Why am I surprised? Because all the experts will say that warmth is required for good colour, that batching should take place in a room that is at least 68 degrees in temperature. Well, my basement was 64 degrees that day, and even with the cold snow on top, the colour is still good. On the negative side, snow dyeing is more work. I have to fill a pail of snow and haul it down to my basement. The other down side (to me, and this will depend on your taste), is that there is less control over the finished product, such that more white spots result. At least with low water immersion, I can manipulate the fabric a bit to ensure all areas have dye on them, whereas with snow dyeing there is much more left to chance. The dye is poured across the snow, with little control in where it ends up. And I thought low water immersion was serendipitous! I think the white wouldn't bother me so much if the colour was softer, but it really stands out in pieces with very intense colour.