Fabric Dyeing again

As I have mentioned before, fabric dyeing is a wonderful excursion into the world of semi-unpredictable creativity. Well, maybe it shouldn't be so unpredictable but it is such fun. I needed some backing fabric to finish off a couple of quilts. Mmmm, when do I find the time to rush off to the shop to buy some backing fabric...wait a moment, I can dye some fabric. Here are the results...

Dark plum fabric for the back of a purple Trip Round the World quilt was first up on the to do list. I had a sample of premixed purple dye. So.... on with the dyeing process.....One thing I learnt is that if you don't mix dye powder properly you get spots of the primary colours that are used to make up the secondary colour - not necessarily a bad thing. The results are a bit like snow dyeing- I love the results.

 

The next photo shows the blue fabric I dyed. I needed backing for one of my stash busting cot quilts so.. I started with a medium blue and then decided that it was too light so I over-dyed it with a navy blue. This piece of fabric will now serve 2 purposes....backing for the cot quilt as well as a stormy sky for a fabric landscape that was commissioned - that is another story for another day

The last photo is an attempt at dyeing a piece of burnt orange fabric  - not a success. It came out too brown. I used 4 parts yellow dye, 4 parts red dye and 1 part black dye powder. Any ideas on how to improve the colour?

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Dyed T-Shirts

Once a year my kids and I dye t-shirts for ourselves. It has become a family tradition. We normally use Sun Dye so have to wait for a bright sunny day but this time, we used the dye and Low Water Immersion dying technique I used to dye fabric I posted about in an earlier post.

We used purple and yellow dye to dye the first t-shirt and red/pink to dye the 2nd t-shirt. My son added black to his t-shirt but I still need to take photos of his t-shirt.

 

More fabric dyeing

Fabric dyeing is rapidly becoming a fascination of mine. Here are some photos of the results.

In this photo the fabric is waiting in front of the washing machine to be washed.

This is a photo of my second attempt - the colours are much better than the first attempt.

The next exercise I had to attempt was to dye pieces of fabric using 2 complementary colours ie Red and Green, Blue and Orange, and Yellow and Purple. I also learnt that the stronger the Soda Ash solution, the brighter the colours. These dyed fabrics are much brighter than the first 2 attempts at dyeing single colours.

This is a photo of the Red and Green fabric. I am battling to mix the dye to make a green other than olive green. It is getting a bit frustrating......

This purple and yellow fabric is quite bright - I wonder where I can use this fabric.....


This orange and blue fabric is also quite bright. You can see the neutral colours appearing where the 2 colours have mixed.

In this last photo I used up all the left over dye..... These fabrics are almost too pretty to use.

My kids and I also dyed some t-shirts. They are still being washed and photographed. My son David has helped a lot with the rinsing out and ironing of the fabric.

Forays into Fabric Dyeing

In past posts I have spoken of the City and Guilds quilting course I am doing (far too slowly at this stage.....). Well, the next step is to learn to dye my own fabrics. What an adventure and huge learning curve.  I am supposed to be doing Low Water Immersion Dying. That's not what came out :LOL  The colours are too solid. I am pretty impressed with the colours of the dyed fabric though.... (The yellows have come out a bit brown in the photo - I'll take more photos when it stops raining and the sun is out - it could take days :LOL)

So.... round number 2 is "on the boil". This is great fun. The internet is also a wonderful place - what did we do without it? It's so easy to research what went wrong and how to fix it.