Low-Immersion dyeing

Here I was thinking I was trying immersion dyeing for the first time, and while digging around on my blog, I see that I not only did immersion dyeing, but used the same ancient Createx dyes! That post is here . Too bad I didn't document how I did it the first time.

And the funny thing is, doing it the other day, I decided I really like low-immersion dyeing and it may be my go-to method for using Procion dyes. Less messy, I don't have to stir big tubs of fabric, and don't have to wait for ice or snow to melt.

For this low-immersion dyeing, I used my ancient Createx liquid dyes I had bought used, for pennies, a few years ago. I got sick of them taking up room in my dye box, so decided to use them up by doing low-immersion dyeing.  They are so old that I figured they wouldn't be very strong so I mixed roughly 1/3C of the liquid to make 1 cup of dye. I somehow had lot of brown dye, and did use some Procion Brown, Golden Yellow, and Antique gold with it in two of the containers.

For my dyeing method, I put one cup of dye in the bottom of the container, squashed one yard of damp fabric into it, then added a second cup of a different dye color on top. After 20 minutes, I poured in one cup of soda ash water (3 tsp soda ash dissolved in 1 cup of water).  The two containers (that had Procion colors mixed in) were rinsed out after two hours. One container had folded fabric and one had a scrunched fabric. The dyes did not get into the folds of the folded fabric and left a lot of white. Also, the brown seemed to be more of a maroon and had a red/pink cast to it. The scrunched fabric turned out great with lots of color variation. (Colors used: Createx Brown; Procion Brown, Antique Gold, Golden Yellow). The folded ones are getting re-dyed today.

 Detail

The other containers I let sit for 24 hours. I did this since the dyes were so old, and also in one of them I used black, and I had read it is best to wait 24 hours when using black.

I don't think these dyes were as stale as I thought. The fabric in the containers that sat for 24 hours ended up not having a lot of variation.

Createx brown and magenta

 Createx blue and black

Createx blue and purple

I really like these fabrics, enjoyed immersion dyeing, and am glad to have those Createx dyes out of my stash (they weren't getting any younger, and unlike wine, do not improve with age).