Painting a Sock Blank for Blue & Rust Yarn

Somewhere on Pinterest, I was seeing the idea of painting a sock blank -- essentially fabric -- and then unraveling it -- deconstructing that knitted format to recover the yarn for some other project.  The yarn was knitted into formation as a blank slate, and then colored applied.

There are so many possibilities for this technique surface design-wise to get different textures. Then there's the colors ...

Here is the inspiration color and surface design I started with.  This is from a quilted bag that I commissioned from Pat Schneider here in town.  I LOVE these colors together : Blue and Rust!

First, I used the larger knitting mill to make a sock blank.  This time, I used the suction cup feet stuck to a chunk of marble.  This worked well.  I set the mill for a flat panel.  I had to watch a video about how to do this, as it's a little tricky when you stop and turn to go the other direction.  Turns out all you need to do is hold the tension when you change direction.  2 balls of Marly Bird Chic Sheep 100% merino wool yarn (Lace) for a 200 gram blank. 

I let the blank soak in the crock pot while it warmed up.  I was thinking of trying a low-water immersion technique in the crock pot, with the blank / fabric all scrunched up to give it some regular texture. 

Then I started mixing colors.    I found a helpful color mixing tool on the Wilton's website to support their Color-Rite system.   I chose a summer teal color (6 drops Blue + 1 drop yellow), mixed with about 1 cup hot water.

Summer Teal - Color Mixing Recipe
6 drops blue
1 drop yellow

I pulled the Blank out of the crock pot, squeezed out excess water and set it aside temporarily.
Then I added 2 T white vinegar and stirred that around.
Then I put the blank back in, and tried to arrange it nicely for interesting textures.
Then I dumped on the teal dye, and let it sit on high for about 30 minutes.

But things were just a little too bright, a little too green, not enough blue.  It didn't quite match my reference photo, or what I was after for this project.

So at the 30 minute mark, I added 1/4 tsp  Wilton's Blue gel (from the little jars), and whatever was on the cap.  Since it was a new jar, I let whatever dye was on the foil lid melt off into the mixing jar with 1 cup hot water.  After that, I added an additional 1/4 tsp of the Blue gel.    After it had dissolved I dumped that into the crock pot.  My first thought was not to stir it much, just let it fall where it may serendipity style, but then I couldn't help myself, and I stirred things up for more uniform color though out the blank as a whole.   By this time, I already had too much water in the pot to stick with a lower-immersion technique.

At some point, I added an additional 2-3 T white vinegar.
Then you just let it sit in the hot bath, and soak up the dye.

When the water runs clear (or nearly clear), you can turn off the heat, and let it cool before you rinse it out.

The next step (after a few more weekends went by) was to use some guar gum as a dye thickener, so that I could then stamp circles onto the blue blank.  Credit for this idea goes to Rebecca at Dye Pot Weekly / Chem Knits recently use guar gum to thicken some dye to use with a stencil on a sock blank.  My idea was to use it with stamping tools like jar lids, paper roll tubes, or other items from the recycling bin ...

Once the stamping surface design is done, the new layer of dye needs to be heat-treated.  Because I want the copper dye to stay where I put it, and not bleed and blend to the rest of the fabric, I rolled it up in plastic wrap and set it in the steamer pot for 30 minutes.  Spa treatment!

When it cools down, it can be rinsed and washed to remove excess dye and the guar gum.  The guar gum made the rise water cloudy, but not rusty -- which meant the dye stayed with the fabric.

Here, the rust doesn't show up as well as it does in person and in brighter light.  While it was drying, the rust circles looked very dark, and I thought, "Oh no!  I didn't account for the layering of the dye colors."  I thought what I had was rust on top of blue to make a much darker navy color instead of rust.  That I would have somehow needed to mask the original so it stayed white and could be later dyed copper (as you see in the inspiration fabric).

I had 2 shades of copper, but they both seemed to print dark.  I know inspiration fabric has a  some darker blue circles on it.  I fI could see what colors I was printing, I might have added some of those too.  It's not too late -- I can always go back and add more.

 

Here it in a different light, where the copper / rut shows up better. 

After thoughts : The other thing I didn't account for was the knit fabric structure acting as a resist to the blue layer.  On this photo you can see a string beginning to unravel on the right side, where it reveals white flecks.  Although I consciously printed the copper circles on both the knit and purl side of the fabric, it did not seep all the way through.  And neither did the blue.  To get that, I'd probably have to really malax the fabric while dyeing the blue layer to get those in-between bits.  Or, I could dye the blue in successive sessions--Or I could have dyed the blue as a skein / loop instead of knit fabric to avoid the white bits.  Then knit it into a solid blue blank, and then added the copper circles.

Me-thinks there is more experimentation to be done with this method!