Over dyeing fabric

Last summer, I tried to do some ombre dyeing with linen. I did a jade green one, a blue one, and a purple one.  I am not a fan of the jade green color and the ombre on the purple didn't turn out well. I  decided to over-dye a portion of the jade green one and the purple one.

 I love to remove some of the color using Rit color remover. I make a batch (outside, because it's stinky), wet the fabric with water and scrunch/rubberband them, and throw them in the bucket. I threw in some other fabrics I thought needed some help as well.

While these sat in the color remover, I made up my dye buckets. I used Azure, Marine Purple, and Cobalt blue with black added.

 I went around the house collecting any fabric I though needed a dye job. 

I removed and rinsed the fabrics that were in the Rit color remover, after about an hour. I left the rubberbands on while rinsing as I wanted them to create a pattern when I put them in the dye bucket. The jade green one was now a lovely aqua color so I decided not to over dye it. .

Here are my fabrics after removing them from the Rit color remover. The dark gray blob on the right was the purple linen with the lighter blob next to it was the jade. The multi-color blob on the lower left ended up pretty cool in the end.

I must not have mixed my dye powders well enough because the Azure and Purple fabrics have a lot of magenta spots on them. Some of the fabrics in the Azure bucket must have been blends as they are now a gross 80's country blue color and I didn't bother to photogragh them.

Here is a before picture of the Jade Green Linen. This picture does not show the true color at all.

After picture, the dark green spots are the true original color:

Purple Linen before:

After, my purple dye was a much redder purple. I find this fabric way more interesting now.

 

This fabric was scrunched in the pot and I guess I didn't open it up while it was dyeing, I really like the texture it created. This fabric is super soft too.

The fabric on the left is my favorite color-wise, I love these deep rich blues. The one on the right was rubberbanded put in the Rit Color Remover before dyeing. It had previously been ice dyed and was nice on one side but the other side was the icky jade green. I rubberbanded the sections I liked so the green section would get the color removed and be re-dyed.  I like how it turned out even if a lot of the original "pretty" colors were removed.

Color remover and over-dyeing

One of my favorite things to do to black fabric, or a dyed fabric that looks gross, is to use Rit color remover and then over dye. I had bought some periwinkle gauzy material and some black broadcloth fabric at the thrift store and wanted to play with them.

I wet all my fabrics first. I scrunched up half of the blue gauze and put rubber bands around it. The other half I did not scrunch and plan to dye another overall color. I scrunched some of the black pieces and accordion folded/rolled some.

In a bucket outside, I put a packet of Rit Color Remover. I boiled two big pots of water on the stove, then poured about 1 1/2 pots of hot water into the bucket. I stir the bucket, then add my fabric. I then put in a second packet of  Rit Color remover that I sprinkled on the fabric, then stirred it into the pot water. The color remover really stinks so it needs to be done outside or a well ventilated room. (Allen says it smells like someone is getting a perm).

At this point, I have two problems.

The gauzy fabric turns off-white almost immediately and I take the non-scrunched one out and put it in the washer. When it is done, I open the washer and it is blue again.  I have had this happen to be before. I think the fabric is polyester or some other non-cotton fabric. 

My next problem is, looking at the picture below, only one of the black pieces, which was a piece of black sheet and not the broadcloth I bought at the thrift store, has any color coming out of it. The thrift store black is not losing any of its color. So again, this must not be cotton. Total bummer.

Since I have a bucket of stinky color remover going, I go and get more of the black sheet material and fold and scrunch, and put in the bucket. I also add some scrunched linen pieces from my attempt at ombre dyeing.  I do add some more color remover at this point as well.  I also make a second bucket and put the pink/red velvet that I tried to Idye poly the other day. (Sometimes color leeches from fabrics in hot water and I did not want to make all the other fabrics pinkish so I did a separate bucket).

I let it sit for about an hour. I make two batches of Procion MX dye, one is Pagoda Red, the other is Lapis. I remove the fabrics from the color remover buckets, do a quick rinse under cool running water, then put the fabrics in the dye batches.

I stuck the gauzy fabrics in the dyes batches as well. I let the fabrics sit overnight and washed them all in the morning. I almost always do some shibori when I have a dye bucket going, so those results are here as well.

On the left, black sheet with color removed and over dyed Pagoda Red. On the right is shibori on white fabric (with some purple dye on it from a previous adventure), the top one was pleated prior to wrapping it to the pole.

 Detail

All these are black sheet with color removed, one scrunched, one pleated horizontally, one pleated diagonally, then dyed Lapis.

Detail

Shibori on white fabric (with some purple dye from previous experiment)

This is the gauze, a blotchy blue on the left and brown

The blue linen had very little color removed. Over dye was Pagoda Red.

The Jade Green had more color removed and was over dyed Lapis. I must have scrunched these too hard as very little dye got to the interior.

Here is the velvet, it was once pink and had some kind of flower or leaf pattern in a darker pink. The pattern is gone. The color is nice but there is a weird greenish spot about 10" in size. I don't know why it's a different color.

I love the blue over dyed fabrics. I have an issue with reds. I have yet to find a red dye that I really like. Most of the fabrics I have dyed red look unappealing. The pagoda red is more like a rust on these fabrics, which is nice, but not quite what I wanted. Does any one know a good red dye to try?

Acid dyeing wool yarn, weekend in Vail

This past weekend we went Vail for the weekend. Allen's niece had gotten married and they were in Vail for their honeymoon, so we met them for dinner on Sunday and wandered about town for a couple days.  The only Aspens that we saw that were still gold were in the town, all the ones on the mountain had already shed their leaves.

Artsy photo in town.

Here is the happy couple and Allen.

We went to Lancelot for dinner with them on Sunday. On Saturday night we went to Ludwig's for dinner and it was really good.

When we got back, I decided I wasn't too fond of this green kool-aid dyed wool yarn and decided to do a variegated acid dye on it.

I mixed three different colors, Chartreuse, Sky Blue and Sapphire Blue. I used 2 tsp for each and the dye looked really dark. I poured 1/4 of each in a cup and watered it down. I used both the concentrated and watered down dyes on the yarn.

I put my yarn in a couple layers of grocery bags to contain any dye that went through the yarn. I poured the concentrated dyes on in areas, then filled in any spots with the watered down dyes.  I put the yarn in my steamer. This steamer is for dyeing only and can never be used for food. I got this pot at the Goodwill a couple years ago. Steamed it for 40 minutes? I was doing other things so did not watch the clock.

The yarn is still drying but here are the results. It is a bit darker than I wanted but it still is lovely.

Easy Ombre dyeing

I got some fantastic linen fabric from Enid this past weekend and decided to try Ombre dyeing.   I did an internet search and decided to try the easy and less time consuming method.  I mixed up three to four ratios of Procion MX dye in 8 oz squirt bottles.  Typically, I did 1/2 tsp in the first one, 1 tsp in the second,  1 1/2 tsp in the 3rd, and 2 tsp in the fourth.  I wrote numbers on the bottles in Sharpie so I would not get them out of order. 

Here are my three sets of dyes: Lapis Blue, Ultraviolet, and Jade Green

I folded my fabrics in half so they would go from dark to light and back to dark.  I also had some 50%poly/50%cotton that I put underneath two of the linen pieces (that were also folded in half). I am hoping the dyes soaked through all four layers. I know the poly blend won't take the dye as well, but if there is white fabric in the house I can't seem to leave it alone. If it is a pale version, I am okay with that.

I would have done this outside but it was only in the 60's so I did it in the tub.  My fabrics were pre-soaked in soda ash water. I put some plastic sheeting in the tub, set my fabric on it, and squirted the dyes on the fabric in equal proportions. I am doing three different sets of fabrics, each in a different color. Next I put down another layer of plastic sheeting and another layer of fabric and squirted on the dyes.  I did this one more time with my last layer. I put some plastic sheeting on top. I was concerned about the dyes getting fully absorbed so I did press on the fabric sandwich with my hands to help push the dyes through.  We will see if it did the trick. (I think I should have probably been more aggressive with this. When I took the fabrics out of the tub, there appeared to be light spots where the fabric was on an angle in the tub. I think this is because the dye ran to the bottom of the tub so there wasn't any dye underneath this section to squish around.)

I let these sit overnight and in the morning washed them  twice. I could see white spots and color variations so I decided to overdye them to at least get rid of the white spots. Here are the fabrics after the ombre dyeing (fabrics were still damp).

Jade Green fabric with three color segments

Jade Green after ombre dyeing, linen

Purple after ombre dyeing, cotton/poly

 Purple after Ombre dyeing, linen

Blue after ombre dyeing, cotton/poly

Blue after ombre dyeing, linen

I didn't wash the fabrics again or dry them, just mixed up buckets of Procion MX in the same colors but a fairly light dye batch, roughly a tsp of dye per each bucket.

If I am making up dye buckets, I am going to fill them with other fabrics too.  The tubes are for shibori dyeing. I love shibori tube dyeing, it's easy and I love the results. I will post about that another time.

I left these overnight, then washed them three times and dried them, and here are the final results.  I would not call these a success, but a good first effort. 

Jade Green linen overdyed, this has the best transition, but this may be because it does not go as dark.

Purple Linen overdyed

Blue Linen overdyed

Here is a section of the purple one that has nice mottling (not good for ombre, but good for other things!)

I will probably manipulate these again.  If I tried this method again, I would do them on a hard flat surface and probably squish the dye around a little more at the transitions between shades.

It is back to the Galaxy quilts for me.  I need to work on painting on them and would prefer to do this outside before the weather turns cold.  In Colorado that could be any time.