Dyeing Reed

When I was in Sisters, OR I did a little dyeing.  In the past, I've purchased some hand dyed reeds for basket making, and it always seems to bleed (at least a little), and most of the books and patterns suggest special basket reed dyes or Rit dyes, but I have been wanting to try dyeing the reed with Colorhue dyes that I already had for other projects.  The first thing I did was soak some scrap reed, rinse, and wipe with an old towel to see if it would bleed.   As long as I made sure to rinse the excess dye off, and other than one color, it seems to be permanent (right now I'm not saying which one, because I plan to do more testing here at home - I was rather limited without a sink outside).  It's an expensive dye, so I didn't waste any, whatever I didn't use on the reed came back home with me in wide mouth canning jars.

As you can see, I space-dyed the reed that will be weavers after using Velcro to hold the bundles together.  Each bundle was squished into the cup and held there until the reed was as dark as I wanted, and of course it changed a bit as it dried.

The stakes were dyed in solid colors, because they have been pre-cut for tiny baskets .

Warp Painting

On Saturday, I took a warp painting class with Jeanelle Miller at Weaving Works and managed to dye three warps. [I had planned to show you the pictures in the reverse order that they are appearing, but blogger isn't letting me move them.]

Anyway, I rinsed out the warps last night and they are still wet, but I couldn't wait to blog them, so I'll take another set of pictures when they're dry. This first picture is a close-up of what I believe to be the 8/2 cotton warp (I was going to take close-ups of all three, but the camera battery died, and that will have to wait until they are dry).

In the picture below, I believe the order of the three warps (right to left) is 8/2 unmercerized cotton, 100% Rayon, and 5/2 pearl cotton. As expected, the unmercerized cotton did not dye as brightly as the others.

Jeanelle brought quite a few scarves to show us before we started choosing colors and dyeing. They were all so beautiful! Here's just few of hers for you to see the possibility of what might be done with the yarns I dyed.

More Construction Progress - dye studio

I know it's hard to believe, but this is not a kitchen, it is a laundry room that I'm going to use for dyeing fabric, and other messy projects that I don't want to do in my studio, as it has an easier to clean tile floor, as well as an exterior door, so that I can work outside, with almost the convenience of being indoors. I made sure we saved the old upright washer and dryer for dyeing, because it really is best for this purpose, and I'm not going to worry about water usage, because it won't be used every day, as I'm not a production dyer, and I'll be using a water-wise front loader for our regular laundry.

First order of business is to purchase enough plastic to cover the countertops!

Lace dyeing results

Well, I've been busy, and one of the things I've been up to is dyeing lace for a sewing hussif and pursif. The hussif will hold all my sewing tools and the pursif will hold it (or maybe just be a purse). I usually just dye laces in whatever color I feel like at the time, with no specific place to use it, however this time I wanted to coordinate all my fabric, lace ribbon and thread for a more uniform look. I was able to find everything, but enough lace, so I decided to get my dyes back out. The dyes I used for this project were OzeCraft and Rainbow Dyes, and need to be heat set in the microwave or with an iron according to the manufacturers.

Enjoy the pics,

Lynn M