Pictures of Dyeing Results

Using just three Warm colors, Chinese Red, Cobalt Blue & Warm Yellow, I was able to dye all these colors shown here:

The directions were from a book called Dyeing to Quilt, and were pretty easy to follow (with a little concentration needed). The fabric I used was a bamboo/cotton blend I got at Joann's a while back. There was only about 1/2 yard left on the bolt I had, so I used small strips so I could get all 12 colors.

One more picture of the bamboo/cotton fabric:

Then, I used the same dye colors on some white linen that I've already used to dye a few times with. Here are the same colors on the linen:

So, by this time I was all out of fabric, and had to go buy more. I went to the closest quilt fabric store in Lexington, NC, about 10 miles from my house, and all they had in the way of a plain white was some off-white muslin. Since Joann's was another 15-20 miles away, I got the muslin.

This is the fabric I showed in the cups in Monday's post. The colors I used were the clear primaries (Fuchsia, Sky Blue & Lemon Yellow). The colors were wonderful while in the cups, but the fabric is poor quality and just doesn't hold the dye well at all.

One more shot of the clear primaries:

The last thing I tried (by then it was Sunday) was a 6-color gradation from yellow to purple. The yellow in this picture is on the right, it actually looks more green here than what it really is. Again, this was on the off-white muslin, and I definitely wouldn't waste my time dyeing with such poor quality fabric in the future. But it was good for experimenting with--and I hope by posting this information here, you all will learn from my mistakes and start with the good stuff.

Serious Dyeing Weekend

I took Friday off from work, and spent some time dyeing fabrics (again). But this time I followed actual directions from a book, Dyeing to Quilt by Joyce Mori, and created all of the colors shown here with three cool primaries.

Here's the cups all lined up, ready to have the counted number of tablespoons and teaspoons. I'm not a person who is really precise, so this exercise took a lot of concentration.

This is one of the color wheels I was trying to recreate:

Sorry, no pictures of the finished products, my camera batteries went dead when I tried to take one. No extra batteries, either. Maybe tomorrow...

Batiked Flowers

One more thing I worked on this weekend (forgot to post a picture yesterday). I batiked a wax outline of the flowers using my tjanting tool, then painted the red, green, and brown. Then I boiled off the wax--there is still a little bit sticking to the fabric, you can see if you look close.

It was a tedious process, but the results were worth it. The piece is only about 20" x 30", so it isn't huge--making yardage using this process would take forever!

Another weekend come and gone

Over the weekend, I took a blue piece of fabric, batiked (with wax) some circles on it, then dyed it in brown. After boiling out the wax, this is what I had.

This black & white fabric

has become this:

I wanted to use the plexiglas shapes I bought a while back to do these circles, but didn't have enough clamps. Instead of driving 12 miles to the hardware store to get some, I just used the good old beeswax for them, too. The fabric wasn't as tightly woven as the egyptian cotton I used in the blue/brown one, so the wax took forever to come out--boiling, ironing, and washing finally did the trick. Have to get some clamps the next time I go to Lowes or Home Depot.

Here are some "what was I thinking when I bought it" fabrics, I dyed w/a few different colors.