Mud vs. Rainbow - thread dyeing

I promised I’d let you know whether I got mud or pretty colours with my thread dyeing experiment yesterday.

Well, they’ve been soaked (several times), rinsed, washed, dried and wound into skeins, and voila....!

I was honestly surprised that they turned out as well as they did. There are a couple of places where they are a little ‘blotchy’. And on a couple the colour change from one to the next is sharper than I’d like, but then again, that might appeal to some people.

In the photo below you can see in the top skein and the third one down are a little patchy near the ends. But they are still lovely colours.

I’ve spent today back in the studio dyeing up another 25 skeins and another bunch of fat quarters and half metres. Now my feet hurt, and all the washing and rinsing is yet to come!

Oh, and here’s the white fat quarter the threads were sitting on. It’s not bad!

My dye table where all my dye bottles sit. I'm considering putting a piece of fabric down on the table next time, then I might get all that gorgeous patterning somewhere I can use it instead of just wiping it off.

A Dyeing Day

I worked a twelve hour night shift last night, and no matter my good intentions, it’s hard work getting motivated the day after an all-nighter.

I sleep till past lunch, but then I rub my eyes and yawn through the rest of the day.

So one of my strategies to still get stuff done is to pick something immersive but that doesn’t demand a whole lot of concentration. Something I can do while listening to 70’s music!

Today the dye studio won the lottery.

It was beautiful down there (my studio is a platform built under our house) with the sun shining through the ti kouka tree, and I got stuck in and dyed a whole stack of my variegated fat quarters. These will be for sale when I talk at Whangarei Quilters next Saturday.

I also tried a slightly different way of dyeing my embroidery threads. Usually I dye these in lots of two or three and carefully control the colour variegations. But today I put them on top of a white fat quarter to soak up excess and then just kinda went for it.

I’m looking forward to washing these out. They could be stunning...or they could be mud...

I’ll keep you posted!

So you dyed an ugly piece of fabric...

what do you do now?

Because dyeing results are the product of so many variables: dilution, type of fabric, temperature, manipulation of fabric, age of dye etc, there is always a bit of serendipity.  Plus, if you are constantly experimenting to see if you can get new and interesting patterns, you are sometimes going to get ugly.

It's a shame I can't find a picture of this piece of fabric before I added the blue.  But I probably didn't take one because it was such an uninspiring, insipid yellow.

It's a half metre piece, so I folded it in half and then formed some sort of circle shape that I fastened with rubber bands (I can still see the rubber band marks) and over dyed it with navy blue.

Hmmmm.  Still pretty uninspiring.  The contrast was pretty wild, I couldn't ever see myself finding a use for it in my studio, so I stuffed it back into the 'one day I'll overdye it' bag.

One day I did overdye it.  This time with an orange.  I think I made it even worse....

Woe is me!  I couldn't even bear the thought of putting it on the back of a quilt.  So in a last ditch effort, I cut it into two fat quarters.  One I dyed black and one I dyed brown:

Well, the brown one still has quite a defined pattern, but the contrast is taken down a peg or two and it almost looks like a wood grain/end of log pattern.  I could imagine finding a use for it now.

But the black!  The black I call success!  There is a subtle richness to it with hints of lots of different colours throughout.  You can almost see the original blue pattern but only just.  There is nothing flat or dull about this dark colour (you might have to see it up close and personal to really appreciate the fullness of colour - you know what they say about photographs and doing justice and all that).

So.  Did you dye an ugly piece of fabric?  Well, just keep dyeing it until you get something you like.  If all else fails - go black!

(And if even that fails, well, we all need a new clean up rag now and then don't we?)

Edited to add:  As my lovely commenters have pointed out, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what I deem as ugly might be lovely to someone else!  So there is another choice if you've dyed an 'ugly' fabric - see if someone else loves it and wants to give it a home...

Dye a little every day

I've been using the hashtag #dyealittleeveryday on Instagram for about six months now.  It was my aim to dye little and often to build up my supply of hand dyed fabric without having to do marathon rinsing efforts (my least favourite part of the process).

No, I haven't managed to dye or post a photograph everyday!  But I have built up my supplies like I wanted.  And there have been other benefits to a regular dyeing practice.  I've honed my studio practice at the dyeing bench to produce fabrics without too much fuss and bother.  I also have worked out methods that suit me and processes to get quite different looks depending on what I want.  Basically, I've been increasing my skills.

There are lots of benefits to a regular creative practice.  I keep meaning to start a regular sketchbook practice but haven't quite got there yet.  I've seen people start daily photo practices or challenges, weekly mini-quilt challenges, printing, scrapbooking, painting, you name it - people will have done it.

Cynthia Morris, over on Original Impulse, wrote a nice blog post on regular creative practices.  She talks about how doing it can develop your skill, help you recognise your style, and learn to get pleasure out of the process.  It's worth heading over to read.

Do you have a regular creative practice?  I'd love to hear about it and how it works for you.  Or have you started one that fell by the wayside?  What do you think went wrong?

Happy creating everyone.