Alchemy - well kind of

It's a beautiful, sunny day just the opportunity for a little bit of fabric dyeing.

Take a pile of white fabric, chopped up into fat quarters, plastic bags

.... and a heap of different yarns.

Step 1 - Turn the utility room into a laboratory

Step 2 - Mix up the dyes.

Handy jam jar collection and salvaged plastic box lids for trays. Notice the marks to aid accurate 'ingredient' measuring for the short sighted.

I need red, blue and yellow and I need to mix a green, orange and a purple. Deep breath, summon up courage and continue.

Step 3 - Measure out the dyes into the plastic bags. Test the colour on pieces of kitchen towel.

Should everything resemble 'brown'? Add a little bit of this and that. Question "Is that orange?, What d' you think?" .... "Are you sure that looks like purple?"

Step 4 - Add the salt, the soda ash and the water.

Step 5 - Mix (Wobble it around.) together in a plastic bag.

Step 6 - Add aforementioned fabric

Calico, quilters muslin and some silk. Some scrunched, some twisted up, some folded. (Why did I iron them first?)

Step 7 - Add the yarns

Linen boucle, cotton chenille and wool.

Now wait and wait annnnnd wait ........ twenty-four hours !!!!!! Really?

The blue bag leaked I don't believe it - re-bag the contents. Dangerous operation but I survived more or less clean.

Little bags of colourful promise!

I know I don't absolutely need to wait that long, but some do say you get better results if you do, so who am I to argue. Anyway, I'll wait patiently (yeah, right!) and see what happens.

Connect with your inner child.

Comments

[Kim]

I've just dyed a dress for my daughter, she wanted pale coffee and it's come out looking like a bar of milk chocolate - oh dear!!!! Your bags of colours look much more promising, in fact they look lovely. You seemed to have had a lot of fun
Kimx