sweetgeorgia

Maiwa’s Introduction to Dyes

This past weekend was spent like every weekend… elbow-deep in dye. But this time, it was with Maiwa’s ["Introduction to Dyes"](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_intro_dyes.html) workshop led by Anne Babchuk at [Maiwa East](http://www.maiwa.com/stores/maiwa_east.html). For three days, we explored a variety of different dyes and dye application techniques from Procion and Washfast Acid dyes to the new-to-me Vat dyes.

We spent Friday evening looking at some gorgeous and intricately detailed textiles, many of them incorporating resist techniques — [shibori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibori), [bandhani](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandhani_work), batik, and block printing… [Shibori (Japan)](http://www.shibori.org/) and Bandhani (India) are just other names for ‘tie-dye’ but the method in which the fabric is tied or folded and clamped can create some facinating patterns and textures.

Saturday was spent immersion dyeing cotton, silk and devoré velvet swatches in Procion MX. While the swatches were setting, we also learned some fold/clamp/resist/tie-dye techniques using plain old cotton fabric and Procion.

Our little group of three people dyed our pot a colour called “Dark Earth” — a mix of Yellow, Navy, and Scarlet — which was supposed to be an earthy, mossy green colour. The interesting result was that the silk swatches didn’t seem to take up very much of the Navy colour and turned out a rust colour! You can see the devoré velvet samples have rust backgrounds and dark green “foliage” — that’s because the fabric is silk-backed and the velvet pile is rayon! Interesting…

On Sunday, we switched from cellulose fibres to protein fibres and dyed silk and wool using Washfast Acid dyes — both immersion and handpainting on skeins. The group that wanted to dye a yellow ochre colour somehow got a gorgeous grassy green colour… probably too much turquoise!

But you can see from the photo above that one of the fabric swatches turned out a pale, pale shade. That would be silk-backed rayon satin… So the backside is a deep green but the “right side” of the fabric is pale green because rayon, being a cellulose fibre, doesn’t dye with acid dyes. You can also see the fluffy pile of 100% nylon that dyed a beige/brown colour in the same pot.

On Sunday afternoon, we started using vat dyes. These are facinating… they discharge dye (remove colour) from the fabric and then deposit a new colour onto the fabric. Also, the final colour does not develop until the dye is exposed to oxygen and allowed to oxidize. So when you are looking at a “red” vat dye bath, it actually looks murky green. Then when you remove dyed items and put them into a cool water bath, the colour starts to develop into red… like magic.

So in the photo above, the swatch that is predominately red is actually our Procion-dyed cotton in “Dark Earth” — we did a rough accordian fold on the fabric, tied it in a couple places with ikat tape (I _love_ this stuff) and then dropped it in the red vat dye bath. In places where the fabric was exposed to the dye bath, the green colour was removed and red was deposited. The opposite happened in the other swatch — it was originally dyed a cranberry red using Procion and then dropped in a green/turquoise vat dye bath. It results in an effect which just seems impossible!

And finally, check out what else went into the vat… a pole-wrapped (arashi shibori) silk scarf. Again, this was silk that was dyed in Procion, [tied to a pole to create little accordian folds](http://entwinements.com/blog-mt3/2006/08/pole_wrappingnew_dimension.html) and then dropped in the vat dye. Since I’m going back to Maiwa East in two weeks for the natural dye class, I left my scarf there to dry. Once it’s dry, the silk will retain the texture of the accordian folds… I’m really looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Eeee!

The class was a wonderful overview to all things chemically dyed. Processes like [vat dyeing](http://www.maiwa.com/stores/supply/dyes_vat.html), I normally wouldn’t undertake on my own since it involves lye (have you seen [Fight Club](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/)?) and thiourea dioxide (really smelly)… in fact, we all wore respirators with organic filters for the afternoon session. So the workshop is a great way to experiment and see what you enjoy the most. In fact, coming out of this workshop, all I want to do is play with the [woven shibori](http://www.interweave.com/weave/books/Woven_Shibori/about.asp) techniques _a la_ Catherine Ellis…

And while I was dyeing this weekend, a big box of my handpainted yarns winged their way to [The Sweet Sheep](http://www.thesweetsheep.com)…

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](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_discharge_dyeing.html) 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](http://www.maiwa.com) here: . Or, ProChem has similar instructions here:

And on a completely separate note, Connie at [Pick Up Sticks](http://www.pickupsticks.ca/) has just opened her new online yarn shop and has lots of my sock yarns in stock plus tons more on the way!

The Golden Fleece

Nothing says “it’s time to finish washing your fleece” like an upcoming fleece sale. That’s right. This Saturday, June 10, there will be a fleece sale in Langley. I was really considering driving down and buying a nice local fleece — maybe something mohair — but then thought, “hey, maybe I should finish using up the Gotland fleece I already have on hand”… so, out come the dyes…

I had just over 1 1/2 pounds left of the fleece, so I washed it, mordanted with alum and dyed it up with Pomegranate and Osage Orange natural dyes. Pomegranate dye is made from rinds of pomegranates and is high in tannin — it is supposed to give a gold/brown/yellow kind of colour. I think it’s better described as “caramel”. The Pomegranate comes as an extract, so all you need to do is add water and go. Here is the dye extract with just a bit of water… it looks just like chocolate ganache… and smells sticky sweet like port and maple syrup…

The Osage Orange, on the other hand, comes as sawdust… It’s cheaper this way. You can buy the liquid extract but Maiwa happened to be sold out when I was there. The Osage dyebath is easy enough to make though — put the sawdust in a pot with enough water to cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Decant and repeat. Since I was waiting for the fleece to finish mordanting, I simmered and decanted the Osage dyebath three times, straining it through an old nylon stocking each time.

Unfortunately, I ran out of alum and so the fleece that was dyed with Pomegranate only had half the amount of alum that it should have. That probably affected the final colour. The Pomegranate dye pot had lots of sticky scum on top, so I was anxious to get the fleece out of the pot and rinse it.

The final colours on this fleece… honey and lemons. That’s what I got. Caramelly honey colour and light lemony yellow.

I’ve separated the darker fleece from the lighter fleece so that when I card and spin the Osage Orange fleece, I’ll get a beautiful, clear lemon yellow yarn and a darker grey/green yellow yarn. The darker yarn will then go into an indigo bath to turn it mossy green. Yeah, sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll do an indigo day and overdye a little of everything I have in the stash — yarn, fibre, wool, silk, whatever.

The colours turned out very much lighter than what I expected, and I have to admit I was a little deflated by that initially — but now when I see that caramel-coloured fleece in the living room light, I love it. It’s subtle and gorgeous — I could dive right in. So this Saturday, instead of buying more fleece, I’ll be playing with this beautiful golden fleece!

Oh, and while I was dyeing on Sunday, Michelle dropped by to show me her first spindle-spun handspun. This is before setting the twist… so wonderful!

And we reviewed my second attempt at getting the right purple on silk…

The Lanaset worked _so_ much better on these skeins of silk. They were immersion dyed in a big pot and the colour is quite even throughout. The skein on the right, the dark eggplant purple, is actually a mix of five different Lanaset dyes to give a colour that is deep but vibrant and glittery.

Procion Mysteries

So! The [vibrating pink silk scarf](http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2006/05/just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should/) is off the table loom and _I love it_… after having overdyed it (scroll down…)

I’m currently playing with some new Procion MX dyes on silk and well, it’s a bit of a love/hate relationship. The results can be a little unexpected and I think it’s because I’m using soda ash as the dye activator. I’ve read that you can also use citric acid to activate the dye (plus heat) and that you are more likely to get a colour that is the same as the dye bath. See here…

Yeah, the colour COMPLETELY changed when I added the soda ash. It was like the blues disappeared entirely and I was left with magenta again. I love it anyway, but I want to try again for a deep, dark violet. With this yarn, I’m hoping to knit the “Silk Camisole” from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

This result, however, was so very welcome. I overdyed the [super pink scarf](http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2006/05/just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should/) with 1/2 tsp of Navy Procion MX in order to “sadden” or desaturate the colours a bit. I got a lovely raspberry colour and will absolutely wear this — I love it! Thanks to [June](http://www.twosheep.com/blog/) who suggested the overdyeing.

One thing that concerns me is using soda ash on silk — it takes away some of the sheen of the silk and makes the texture a little more “cottony” or rough… So the next thing I need to try is using the citric acid instead and adding heat. But the appeal of dyeing with Procion, for me, is that it can be done easily without much equipment — take your dye powder and table salt (although I used Glauber’s Salt) and dissolve it in warmish/cool water (105F); add your wet fibre/yarn/fabric and mix for 30 minutes; add soda ash and mix for 30 minutes; let it sit some more then wring it out and rinse (a million times) until clear. All you need is a dedicated pot. One pot dyeing.

Dye happy.

It was terribly unfortunate that my yarn order hadn’t arrived by the weekend, so I had no yarn to dye! Agh. Well. In lieu of dyeable yarn, I dyed some wool and silk noil over the weekend…

Last Wednesday was our last spinning/dyeing class and so we did some handpainting with Procion dyes. I’d never used Procion before, so this was a good, new experience. Procion dyes are used for low temperature dyeing of cellulose fibers including cotton, linen, rayon, and ramie. It also dyes silk. Procion comes in both a powder or liquid form and we used powders to mix dye stocks.

I forgot to bring fibre to dye, but did purchase 1 lb. of tussah silk noil from the instructor which I used for dyeing. This silk noil was _cheap_ — about $16 CAD per pound. And one pound of silk noil is about the size of a bedspread! Of course, it does come with complimentary silkworm bits that you have to pick out…but did I mention it was _cheap_? When I get my drum carder, I want to blend the silk noil with some other fibres for some textured yarns.

Also, one of my classmates had given me a lock of ramie fibre a couple weeks ago that I pulled out and handpainted. This fibre turns out so shiny! But feels a little like really soft linen. I was very impressed with how the colours turn out so vibrant.

I did get an order of new dyes from ProChem last week that I wanted to try out — some new Lanaset and WashFast colours in several shades of green and red. So I did some hot pour dyeing with wool — basically, you place the wool in a shallow amount of water (just enough to cover), then pour a little bit of dye onto sections of the wool. Wait for it to strike and exhaust, then add other colours to the other sections. Oddly, some of the dye colours separated a bit, so something that was supposed to be burgundy separated into reds and violets.

Two and a half hours until the new wheel arrives!!