Color in the Dye Pot: Sky Blue and Evergreen

Evergreen and Sky Blue on wool yarn

I am nearing the end of knitting another pair of socks, and looking ahead to the next project -- and it occurred to me that I needed to dye some more wool yarn for that.

What colors?  Blue and Grape?  Black Cherry and Red Wine (Merlot)?  Evergreen?

All staple colors for me. but I went with sky blue and evergreen this time.

I am using Procion Dye.  You can't use the activator because it will damage the wool, so instead, I use vinegar and heat to make the dye colorfast.  Dharma has instructions on their website.

 

I started with 4 balls of yarn, tied into old onion skin net bags so they will stay a little compacted (not too tight).  The bags also keep them from unravelling in the pot and becoming a  giant tangle.  A trouser sock or nylon sock would also work to hold the ball together, and also act as a partial resist to help with thaqt gradient effect.

I am using my favorite sock yarn wool for dying: Chic Sheep merino wool yarn from my stash.  I don't think it's available anymore for purchase, so I'll have to find a substitute in future.    These are all the same white / lace colore to start with, even though the lighting and net bags make them all look different in the photo above.

 I soaked the white balls of yarn in water ahead of time, as the pots of water were warming up to just below a simmer.  This helps the balls to take up the dye more evenly.  In actuality, I was looking for a more mottled / gradient look, with some variation through the ball.  In that case, I should have just prepared the dye bath and tossed in the dry balls of netted yarn.

To prepare the dye bath:

Heat a pot of water to just below simmering.  Because this is wool, you don't want it to boil or you'll have felt.

I was using old Procion dyes.  Using Dharma's instructions for Procion Dye on wool (no soda ash, as it can destroy the protein fibers).   I sized it for roughly 1/2 pound of fiber, or 2 balls of merino wool yarn, each at 100 grams.

In the Dye Pot,
1-1/2 T salt
1/3 cup white vinegar
Enough water to cover / submerge the balls of yarn.
Heat this until it gets just ready to simmer.

For the dye concentrates, I mixed up
1 tsp dye powder with
about 2 cups warm water.
1 put that in a plastic bottle with a tight-fitting cap, so I could shake it up until the dye powder was completely dissolved.

Once the dye pot was hot enough (just ready to simmer, not boil), I removed the yarn balls, I added the salt and vinegar, then the dye concentrate. Stir that up.

Then add the balls of yarn.  Let them simmer until the dye has moved from the water into the yarn. 

For the blue, you may need to add more vinegar as that encourages the uptake of the blue dye. 

 

I let them simmer for about 2 hours.  Then then turn off the heat, and let them cool completely.  Then I dumped the dye water, squeezed out the balls and rinsed them in new water, letting them soak overnight.  I repeated this rinse process until the water ran clear. 

Then I squeezed out the balls (still in the net bags) and hung them by the fire to dry for a few days.  From past experience, it's difficult to unravel a wet ball of yarn, so  be patient and let them dry. It may take a few days, but that's ok.

 

The dry dyed yarn balls -- un-netted. 

  

The next step is to wind the dyed balls onto a niddy-noddy to make skeins.  

  

This allows you to see what you have as far as color gradients, etc. 

 

 

 

Notes: Again, it's been a long time since I dyed yarn, so I forgot --  the measurements for dye were a little less because I wanted the mottling.  But I forgot that tiny detail, and added a bit more dye,, and dumped in the entire 2 cup bottles, which gave more even coverage of the dye all through the balls of yarn. 

I should have looked back at this post: More Kettle-Dyed Yarn : Green, Blue, and Stormy Skies as this was more of the effect I was after.   

Weaving - Wandering Vine Cotton Towels

All cotton towels. Overshot 4-shaft weaving pattern: Wandering Vine.

 

With the leftover warp from the Wandering Vine Coverlet, I made some all cotton towels.

The warp is 10/2 American Maid Cotton, same as for the wool coverlet.

Wandering Vine All Cotton Towels, fresh off the loom

 

 

The weft is Maurice Brassard Cotton in various colors.  I had to double up the pattern threads, so I used the shuttle with 2 spools.  It was not working to wind both strings onto the same spool. 

All the towels turned out quite well.  A few special people will be getting some hand-made towels in the coming year.  ;-)  They all have a nice hand -- what you would expect for towels.  As I understand it, they will improve with use, washing and drying will improve their absorbancy.

I varied the pattern repeats, too, as I wanted to see how much they would shrink and just what makes a good size for a kitchen / tea towel. 

On the loom under tension, they measured about 36 inches wide.

After wet-finishing, they shrunk to  32-1/2 inches wide.  There is always more take-up than you'd expect.  The measurements below do not count the bits that are folded under for the hems at the tops and bottoms.

They are all slightly different lengths (or widths, depending on your perspective), in part because I wanted to test out some different sizes for towels -- and because I filled only so many bobbins and didn't want to waste the Brassard cotton. 

Red - 32-1/2 in x 20-1/2 inches with 4 pattern repeats.

 

Sky Blue - 32-1/2 in x 24 inches with 5 pattern repeats.

The actual blue is lighter than it shows in the photo.

 

Green - 32-1/2 in. x 24-1/2 inches with 5 pattern repeats. 

 

Indigo - 32-1/2 in x 15 inches with 3 pattern repeats.  My husband claimed this one, as he thought it was the perfect size and color for his blue kitchen. 

 

Here it is hanging in it's rightful place on the oven door handle in the kitchen. 

Watermelon Quilt - Taste the Summer

 

Lovely Summer Colors for The Watermelon Quilt

Too many irons in the fire ...  In addition to planning for multiple simultaneous weaving projects, I am also continuing to plan quilting projects, too.  I just got these watermelon jelly rolls and have been contemplating how to put them together so that the watermelon idea remains intact.

I want to stick with my standard Fuzzy Logic Strip Therapy quilt pattern. It makes me happy, and it's fun to do.  And always a satisfying finish!  ;-)

The 2 jelly rolls include a nice balance of greens and watermelon reds, along with 4 strips of black for the seeds. I thought about using black for the sashing between the blocks, but have since decided that would require too much black and throw off the color balance ... 
 

I have since decided that it would be better to integrate the black seeds along with a watermelon red square -- making them both half the original size.  This would better simulate the size and quantity of the seeds with the overall watermelon.   

The accent sashing should be something lighter -- like the white part of the melon rind.   This is what I finally chose as the accent fabric.  It's a little grungy -- has a touch of green, like a watermelon rind, and a touch of blue like the sky on a perfect day for a picnic.

I took a few watermelon blocks up to my favorite Quilt Shop in Appleton last month and auditioned fabrics for the rind.  This was the clear winner!

The thin inner border can be black, with something that ties it all together for the border --That pink watermelon check in the top picture will be the perfect compliment!

The rectangle with the bit of black for the watermelon seeds didn't quite come out as planned, but I'm going to run with it.  They are a little long to mimic seeds.  I should have worked it so they were squatter and fatter, not running the long part of the rectangle.  But in the overall quilt, this will be perfectly fine.

Even though it's red and green, this is distinctly NOT a Christmas Quilt.  Far from it!  Taste the summer!

Now I need to finish pressing all the blocks, and then trim them up before I can lay them out on the design wall for final assembly. Who-hooh!

Now to prove that we did go out-and-do this holiday weekend ...

 

Sophie at the Water's Edge

In the Dye Pot: Kettle-Dyed Sock Yarn

Since I finished a new pair of socks, I felt like I had depleted my stash of dyed sock yarn.   So -- out with the colors ...  I looked over my already mixed Procion dye stocks in the basement wet studio and chose several old blues (Strong Blue, Turquoise, Sky Blue) and decided to use them up in a no-dye-left-behind stance.

 

I also mixed up a batch of Black Cherry.  

Using Dharma's instructions for Procion Dye on wool (no soda ash, as it can destroy the protein fibers).   I sized it for roughly 1/2 pound of fiber, or 2 balls of merino wool yarn, each at 100 grams. [Actually, this is what I SHOULD HAVE DONE.  I miscalculated, and thought my 2 balls of yarn required a double batch ofdye.  That's why it came out darker than expected, without the flecks of white for a nice gradient.]

Pre-soak the balls of yarn in room-temp water for about 30 minutes.

In the Dye Pot,
1-1/2 T salt
1/3 cup white vinegar
Enough water to cover / submerge the balls of yarn.
Heat this until it gets just ready to simmer.

For the dye concentrates, I mixed up
1 tsp dye powder with
about 2 cups warm water.
1 put that in a plastic bottle with a tight-fitting cap, so I could shake it up until the dye powder was completely dissolved.

Once the dye pot was hot enough (just ready to simmer, not boil), I added the dye concentrate -- not usually the entire bottle (except for the teal). Stir that up.
Then add the balls of yarn.

Then I let them simmer on the stove for about 1 hour.  I am amazed at how the Procion dye nearly exhausts with this technique -- I see that a lot with the food coloring, but usually not with the Procion on cotton.

Dyeing Wool with Procion Dye -- Kilt Greem, Sky Blue, Rosewood, Leaf Green

Kilt Green (Procion dye -- looks dark gray) 

Wilton's Copper and Kelly Green

Dharma offers some good instructions on how to dye wool with Procion fiber-reactive dye.  Normally you'd use acid-dyes on wool because it's a protein fiber, but the soda ash required for fiber-reactive (Procion dye) is destructive to the wool fiber.

The trick is to use salt, white vinegar, and heat in place of the soda ash, which can severely damage wool.  I did a 2-pound batch in a large pot used for canning.  I also simmered it for 2 hours, instead of the recommended 20 -30 minutes.  Then it sat in the pot overnight to cool down.  Then I spent the next few day soaking and rinsing out the excess dye, salt and vinegar, rinsing the water several times until it ran clear.

In my first experiment, I used an old jar of Kilt Green on gray-ish merino salvage strips from Pendleton 9at the bottom of the photo above).    In the dye pot, it looked blue black-- like a Raven.  Not green at all.  When the wool was washed and rinsed, it came out to be a dark gray.  Obviously much darker than the original light gray strips, but nothing I imagined to be Kilt Green.

Won't this look lovely with a few Granny Smith apple green strips as accents?
Or maybe a clasped-weft with bight on one side and dark on the other?

The second time, I used up a jar of 10-year old Sky Blue.  7 teaspoons seemed about right for 2 pounds of wool strips.  When the pot had cooled, the water was just a pale blue, very nearly clear -- I've never ever seen fiber reactive dye exhaust like acid dyes do--until today.  Even the rinsing was easy.  And the color appears to be staying on the fiber. 

Then I tried some old pre-mixed colors-- Rosewood (above) and Leaf Green (below).

The Leaf Green has a bluish cast to it.  Very nice!  I did one pot of the woolly worms, and one pot with a large skein of yarn for wool warp.  This cone of rug warp appears to have some sizing on it -- I should have scoured it ahead of time.  I let it pre-soak in the dye pot as it was warming up.  But it was giving off an odd smell, and the water clearly had something else in it -- the starch/sizing -- before I put in the salt, vinegar and dye stock.  I kept it going, despite that additive.  It did not seem to hinder the yarn from absorbing the dye.

It's such a nice color, I wanted to try it on the woolly worms, too, to see what kind of contrasting colors I'd get.    Very nice!

This method is working out very well for imparting color to Pendleton merino wool strips, woolly worms, and wool rug warp.   I can vouch that Dharma's method here works out pretty well--even with old dye.