Adventures in fabric dying

Just because I haven't been over here to post lately doesn't mean that I haven't been indulging my creative side. On the contrary, I feel as though I've had the luxury lately of immersing myself in it. I've been reading this book recently, along with this magazine and this one too. And in a bout of cleaning, I recently ran across my old stash of Cushing's Perfection Acid Dyes that I used when I was dying wool yarn regularly. Having never used these dyes on silk before, I decided to do some research to see if they would work on silk. According to what I found, these acid dyes work on "some silks" so I decided to do some experimentation.

The test swatches above were done using natural silk duplioni purchased long ago from Denver Fabrics. After the testing was done I decided to dye some fabric!

This piece above was dyed using straight Terra Cotta in an acid dye bath (I use white vinegar). It was soaked until most of the dye was taken up by the fabric but if you look closely, you can see some variation in the saturation (that's not just poor lighting in my kitchen).

Next in another acid dye bath, I added a little bit of Turquoise along with some Wood Rose..

I was expecting purple but actually got a light denim blue in the end, also variegated in the dye saturation. So far, a small piece of the larger denim blue silk has become this bag...

...which will soon be up for sale in my etsy shop. Although I expected something completely different, I am very pleased with the delicate nature of this particular end result. When I paint, I often find more satisfaction in mixing my own colors rather than using them straight out of the tube. I feel the same satisfaction from mixing my own dye colors.

And lastly, what to do with all of these little scraps? At 6:00 am while I should have been getting ready for work, laying them out and adhering them to interfacing was much more exciting than breakfast!

I'm not sure yet what this will be but it's the result of all of my little strips and scraps of fabric, mostly my own dyed silk. I will see where the inspiration takes me on this one and keep you guys posted as it develops.

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Bundle of Lime

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