Ends & Picks » Dyeing

Woodland Creatures

Melissa — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 20:17:53 +0000

A few months back, rhymeswithfun and I were able to take another great class at the Textile Center – Woodland Creatures!

We learned basic embroidery techniques as well as how to dye wool felt with Kool-Aid.

But the best part was that The Madre was in town and joined us to make an adorable owlet!

Woven Shibori

Melissa — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:42:58 +0000

Throughout the month of May, my friend Elisa and I spent our Saturdays at the Weaver’s Guild taking a wonderful class on woven shibori taught by Traudi Bestler. Woven shibori was developed by Catharine Ellis and it was her book, Woven Shibori, that we worked from throughout the class.

The first two days of class we planned, calculated, wound, warped and started weaving our projects. It was WONDERFUL being back in a weaving studio and even though I was pretty rusty with all my preliminary yardage calculations (as exhibited by the extra long warp I ended up with – oops!)

The third class we spent in the Dye Lab and since I ended up with two pieces of fabric, I decided to immersion dye one and hand paint the other. The fourth class we all came together for show and tell!

Unfortunately, the yarn Elisa and I wove with had a much higher twist than our classmates so we didn’t get the high contrast that others got.

Even so, I’m quite pleased with the results!

Painted Skeins

Melissa — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:39:08 +0000

Today I took the Paint A Wool Skein class at the Weavers Guild. Aimee Radman is a great teacher and it was a really fun class.

We mixed enough colors to paint two skeins. The hardest part was waiting for the colors to set and yarns to cool before the final rinse.

The colors really blossomed beautifully after finishing.

What a great class!

Procrastination Can Be a Beautiful Thing

Melissa — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:28:04 +0000

I leave for China in less than 36 hours. For two weeks. And I’ve not yet packed a single thing.

Awesome.

Instead, I spent my last October Sunday afternoon dyeing a second round of scarves. Most I plan to dye a third time to get even more color depth, but here are the ones I’ve decided to keep as true Double Dyes.

The first round colors were Baby Pink, Sapphire Blue, Primary Yellow, and Tangerine that were overdyed with Plum, Pewter, and Chocolate. My second round dye baths did nothing that I thought they would, but I still like they way these scarves turned out.

Once again, I am in awe of the Double Dye!!

Indigo Dyeing

Melissa — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:17:00 +0000

Today I took Indigo Dyeing at The Fiber Studio with Virginia Parent. What a great class!

Indigo dyeing is fascinating. The dye vat is a yellowish-green and so are the fibers…until you introduce oxygen. As soon as you pull your wool out of the bath and the fibers hit air, the color turns to green and then blue. The color transformation happened too fast for me to grab my camera in time, but it was beautiful.

I dipped my yarn three times and what fantastic results!

Double Dye!

Melissa — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:22:00 +0000

My friend Suzie and I just finished up a two part class at the Textile Center called Double Dyeing. It was all about shibori dyeing and taught by Sandra Brick, a wonderful teacher who was great for pulling me away from my left-brained habits and pushing my comfort zone to the limit. Put purple next to orange? Pink next to green? Not in my manufacturing world you don’t – you get brown muck. But in Double Dyeing, you get truly beautiful results.

Shibori is the Japanese word for putting patterns on cloth by using several different methods of dyeing. In our first class we learned how to braid, twist, clamp, and bind silk scarves. When submerged in the dye baths, the areas of fabric that are held tightly together resist the color and leave behind beautiful patterns.

We also did some discharge dyeing. We took black cloth, clamped it, bleached it to reveal any color that might be underneath, and then reclamped & redyed it.

Sandra took us to the next level by having us take our single dyed scarves, re-clamp/twist/bind/braid them and throw them into another dye bath. The results were stunning.

Our second week we learned the arashi, or pole-dyeing, method. We used big fat wine bottles instead of poles (or trees, like the Japanese do), but the idea is the same.

Sandra almost made my head explode when she reclamped my blue & green scarf and threw it in the plum bath. Triple dyeing? Beautiful.

Such a fantastic class – hooray for Double Dye!!