Dyeing Experiments on Pendleton's Merino Wool Salvages

Last summer, I went wild and purchased 20 pounds of Pendleton Premium Merino Salvage Strips with the intention of weaving rugs with them.  When you mail order these strips, you can't choose what you get.    They are very affordably priced, but you get what you get.  Of course I was hoping for more of the Blackwatch (dark navy and green) like I got with my first trial order.  But I wound up with 2 bales (20 pounds) of this :

Once I was able to see it as a neutral palette to expand upon and dye my own colors, I started to feel better about it.

Now that I know a little more about dyeing wool with Wilton's icing dyes, I set up some experiments this weekend.

Example of the Pendleton Strips as received.

 

While letting the Pendleton strips pre-soak in some tap water,  I set up individual jelly jars with the crock pot as a double boiler.  This set up provides the required heat, while preventing the separate colors from blending into each other.

I used 1/8 tsp of Wilton's Royal Blue, Black, and Violet in separate jars.
Then I mixed up a green with the Color Right System. (Not crazy about that green, so I'd probably buy a jar of the Kelly Green, and not bother with mixing it -- or I'd have to add more blue.)
5 drops of crimson in a separate jar, and used the orange left over from last week.

Into each jar, I added 1 teaspoon vinegar (kind of like dying Easter eggs). 

Then I added 1 of the Pendleton strips (which is cut off of their their blankets) cut in half, as that seemed like a good test amount to begin with, and that's what conveniently fit into the jars.

Then I let the crock pot provide the heat for the next few hours, checking on them periodically.

After a couple of hours, the colors seemed to be absorbing sufficiently, but there was still some dye in the water.  So I added a second strip to each jar.  That's the lighter strip crossed over the more saturated originals.





Of all these, my favorite is the Wilton's Black, which came out more of a plum-my purple with a sage-y green in the last hour.


The blues and violets are nice, too.  They almost have the same blue with the 2nd strip.



The green is a bit much -- It would have to be mixed with something else to tone it down.  It looks muted in the photo above, but in person, it's one of those colors that digs at your brain.  Kind of an acid green.



The red and orange might look nice together with a complete fall palette with other browns and golds.   I like how the stripes toned down into shades, rather than actual colors there.

Knowing what I know now about how different colors strike at different times in the process, I think I can use this knowledge to get a great variety of colors out of 1 dyepot application.  For instance,  I could start with 1/3 the total amount of fiber to dye, then add another 1/3 after an hour or 2, then the last 1/3 towards the end -- and each 1/3 would be a different color, but would still likely coordinate.  The trick is to figure out just how much you'd need to put in at the start to make it last through to the end of your batch. 

I also want to try out the Procion dyes again.  I understand that the soda ash is very hard on the wool, and can cause it to disintegrate.  But I'm wondering how extreme that is?  Does it cause the fiber to disappear in the pot?  Last time I did it, I did use some old Procion dye with vinegar.  Because it was missing the preferred mordant (soda ash), most of the color washed out on the rinse cycle.  But enough stayed behind to make the fiber in the pot look like a cohesive batch.  It worked really well on those woolly worms -- even if it wasn't the colors I'd expected.  More experiments to come ...