sweetgeorgia

Procion MX and Cotton

During my latest dye session, I squeezed in a few minutes to paint a unmercerized 8/2 cotton warp that I will be using for towels/runners and maybe a doubleweave shuttle holder(?). See the finished warp:

I was inspired by an old back issue of Handwoven magazine (March/April 2000) where the author, Janelle Elissa, handpainted warps so that she could weave simple, quick, and inexpensive but incredibly colourful projects in between chasing her three young children. These are inexpensive cotton warps that will be woven with plain black cotton as the weft to make the colours pop out.

As for the colours, I was inspired by an old project designed by Jo-Anne Ryeburn from “Weaver’s” magazine (now defunct). It’s called the “Glowing Crosses Runner” and can also be seen in the book “Best of Weaver’s: Thick n’ Thin”. The colours in the runner are dyed with just three colours of fibre reactive dye: red, gold and navy. So simple. All the other colours — the varied purples, plums, wines, ochres, etc. — are all generated from mixing these three dye stocks in different proportions. I’m used to using two turquoises, three blues, three yellows, three reds… so this was so nice and easy!

Procion is available as a liquid, but is more expensive, so I used Procion MX powders and mixed up 2% dye stock solutions adding in Urea and Glauber’s salt. Rather than adding heat and acid to cause the dye to react with the fibre (like acid dyes), Procion relies on to addition of soda ash (alkali) to fix the dye. The first thing to do is scour the cotton yarn to remove anything that might interfere with the dye by washing it with Synthrapol or Orvus Paste. Then, the cotton needs to soak in a soda ash solution (1/2 cup of soda ash in 1 gallon of hot water) for about 15-30 minutes.

The soak solution can be saved and re-used (ProChem says this solution can be stored indefinitely at room temperature in a closed container!). Then the painting begins! If you like, you can thicken up the dye stock with sodium alginate so that you have more control over the placement of the dye. But I wanted to squish the dyes around and have them blend continuously throughout the warp, so I left the dye as is. It’s a little messy, but it’s like fingerpainting for grownups! These are “just for fun” dye projects so I don’t write anything down (except for recording it in a post like this) and I don’t worry about any of it being reproducible. Just splash, play, and squish…

Then the whole thing gets wrapped up in plastic and rolled up like a cinnamon bun. For some reason this is called “batching” or “batch setting”. I don’t know. Basically you roll it up and leave it alone for 24 hours. The dye “cures” at room temperature (above 22° C / 70° F). You could start washing the warp after a couple hours, but there are more vibrant colours to be had if you can be patient!

I do love this process so much that I find myself buying weaving yarns in only plain white/natural and black. Just add colour.

You can get the Procion MX directions straight from Maiwa here: http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/procion_mx.pdf. Or, ProChem has similar instructions here: http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MX_WarpPaintingCottonSilk.htm

And on a completely separate note, Connie at Pick Up Sticks has just opened her new online yarn shop and has lots of my sock yarns in stock plus tons more on the way!