Time to Dye

Yesterday I finally managed to find some time to put into practice what I learned in Mindy's dyeing class. You remember, the one I went all the way to Toronto for.

All told I spent about 2.5 hours playing, but a good proportion of that was spent serging the edges of the fabric and preparing the dyes.

I tried a couple of different techniques using the blue dye that Mindy gave us in the class and some purple that I've bought since. I had several pieces of white and natural coloured fabric and a few different colour skeins of DMC to play with. One thing that Mindy showed us in the class was the different results you can get when dyeing thread, if the thread isn't just white to start with.

Mostly I just scrunch dyed the fabrics, but I did do one piece by laying it out and sort of dripping and sponging the dye onto it, and then leaving it for a couple of hours. Personally I think that piece came out the best, and the colours were certainly more vivid, but that could partly be due to the fabric, as I used the fabric that Mindy had given us, which was much thicker, and better quality, than the rest of the stuff I was using.

I was very pleased with all the fabrics. The threads didn't come out quite how I'd hoped, which I think was because I'd mixed the purple dye too strong, so it overwhelmed the underlying colour of the thread. Then again, it's all part of the learning process and they still look good.

Anyway, I've added a new album to my Webshots that contains pictures of all the pieces I dyed. Go here to see them.