Solar Dyeing Experiments

 Solar Dyeing Experiments

Equipment-
canning sealer jars - quart or litre.  I used both sizes.
Clean wool fibre
Dyes -  Acid, Food Colours, Fibre Reactive
additives for each dye -
vinegar or citric acid
synthropol for Fibre Reactive Dyes

quantities - 
Wool enough to fit in jar allowing water to circulate

1/4 c vinegar

water to top up

dyes -  a few ml of fibre reactive or acid dyes
dabs of food colours

synthropol if using fibre reactive dyes

Method -

Soak wool fibre in water for at least an hour before starting dyeing.

Add vinegar and some water to jar.

Add water saturated fibre to jar.

Top up with water.

Add dye and sythropol if needed.

I just dabbed the food colours in various placed on the fibre.  I used a craft stir stick to add the food colour.  It only took a tiny bit to get a lot of colour.  With the Fibre reactive dye, I used a syringe to measure out a few ml of dye and added it lower down on the fibre.

Add lids to jars and set in the sun to warm up.  They need to get to about 185 degrees for an hour or so.   

This time of year, at our more northern location, the sun is too low in the sky to warm up the dyes in the jars.   I ended up steaming the jars to get the dye to exhaust.   (remove the lids first).   You could put them in a dark plastic bag, your car in the sunshine or paint the jars black to absorb more heat.

  It was fun to do but really, it's just a small amount of fibre, so not really productive here unless you have a lot of jars going.  Earlier in the summer, one could probably spray paint buckets black and do larger amounts in the sun - maybe some sort of foil reflector would help.    I also think that further south, this is likely a much more effective method of dyeing.

So fun, but not effective in late August, in my back yard or front yard, since I tried both.  Not enough fibre dyed for my projects or preference.   I generally like to dye in at least 100 g quantities.  Would I do this again?   Maybe, earlier in the year.  A few years ago I did a lot of indigo vats using the painted buckets, starting in June and it was pretty decent results.

Felting and spinning and spinning and spinning

 It was Textile Day at Westfield yesterday.  I ran an activity for making wet felted beads.   These are the samples I made up ahead of time.  I have another container full, but it's in that super safe place and really, I didn't have the energy to dig it up.  It was easier to just make new ones.  I started decorating a couple of them just because.   Most of the kids and adults who made a bead, had a great time and were very successful. We made necklaces and bracelets with a little bit of embroidery floss.   Once people started coming in, it was non-stop beadmaking.    I haven't been that tired at the end of a Westfield day in a while.   Silly me though.  I'd brought my wheel and some cotton to spin during the down times.   I probably got 4 or 5 yards of cotton spun as there was no down time during the whole afternoon. 

Just a heads up that if you come to Westfield on Sept. 2nd, I'm currently planning to churn ice cream!   Yay!   That's a good way to end the summer. 

 When I got home, we had a campfire.  I picked some of the drying Tigerlily (those orange ditch lilies) leaves and turned them into cordage.   My sweetie thought it was a lot of work, but really, I was sitting around the campfire doing nothing otherwise.  Now I have 2 metres of cordage suitable for basketry.   I'm drying some of the still green leaves to see if they make a difference in workability.   I wonder if bull rush leaves would work as well?   There are a bunch in the ditch, up the road!

 This is some ramie I dyed when I was first playing with Fibre Reactive dyes.   It is definitely a bold colour.   The ramie sliver was pretty compacted when I was done dyeing.  I tried shaking it out,  spreading the fibres manually, carding the fibres and then finally just stripping the sliver into thin bits.   The carding worked reasonably well, but of course was extra work.  The stripping into thin bits of sliver worked the best though and was quite fast.   There was a fair bit of short bits and neps in this fibre, but it looks pretty decent despite that.

This is more ramie.  The right skein I spun up in the past two days.   It was a bit of roving which was perfect.  All long staple lengths, with no short bit or neps.  It flew out of my hands and onto the wheel.  It was a joy to spin.  The skein on the left is from a previous batch of this same colourway.  What a difference in dye lots!   Just a reminder to get enough of one dye lot if you need it for a particular project.   I didn't believe they were the same colourway at first, but I'd been storing the skeins in their original packets, and sure enough - same colourway, just a different colour.   It won't really matter for what I have in mind though, so I'm happy enough with it.

I've two projects to put on the loom, which I'd planned to do over the summer.  I guess since summer is almost over, I should get started on those.   :)

More Colour Experiments

I did a few more low immersion dyeing experiments last week. I had some fibre reactive dyes which needed using up.  Dyeing protein fibres with fibre reactive dyes is a similar process as using acid dyes.  Slightly different percentages, and a bit of synthropol added to the mix.  Heat is needed to set the dyes on wool, rather than time as on cellulose fibres.   This multi-coloured batch is a bit larger than the others as well, as I had about 130 g of the same blend fibre left in 2 bags, which I combined. My main worry with this batch was the fibres were a bit crowded.  I had to be quite careful that the bottom layers of fibre were dyed adequately.   It turned out quite spectacularly for a random blend of colours.

I had enough old dyes for two experiments.  Then I took the time to mix up new dyes.   This is fuchsia and  turquoise.  It is 100 g, which seems to be a good amount in my pan for this type of dyeing.   It turned out quite lovely, with the bright but not glaring colours and gentle colour transitions.  I lay the roving in the pan in a zig zag fashion, across the narrow end of the pan and back again.  I poured the dyes on in layers or in rows, from lighter to darkest, in the pan, keeping the same back and forth motion with the dye application as I'd used with laying the fibre in the pan.  This one was fun to see take up and set.

 Oh, the brightness of this one.  This is for spinning on a dull, grey, winter day.   I used yellow and fuchsia, in random splotches.  It made my day when I pulled that out of the dye pot. 

The one below used fuchsia, blue and black.  It was also with the end lot of the old dyes.   I left a bit of white fibre on purpose for mellowing down the colours.   This is a blend which I'm betting looks awesome when spun.  I love to see how some of the fibre colours appear to change once they are spun.  The blending of the colours makes a lot of difference sometimes.

Today's experiment is solar dyeing.   Really, our weather in July was the prime time for solar dyeing, but I'm doing this at Westfield on Sunday, so thought a few experiments to show would be nice.  These two are using fibre reactive dyes.   I've also got food colours and the Kool-Aid powder that we found when my daughter and I were out fabric hunting in July.   I've lots of bits of fibre from random fleeces which I'm using.   

 I'll do up a post with a better explanation of the solar dyes, once I've got a few more samples.  The pink jar is leftovers from the last dye session and the multi coloured jar is just splashes of 3 different colours, applied to different areas of the fibre in the jar,  with a syringe

Quick project update

 The nice thing about having a few extra bobbins for your spinning wheel is that you can switch up a project with ease.   I decided that I didn't want to spin up the cotton that was the current project.  I'd been rooting through some stored bags of fibre and found this unlabeled braid of fibre I'd previously dyed.  I'm presuming it's some sort of superwash BFL, as I remember dyeing a bunch of sliver in different colour combinations and in slightly larger than 100 g increments.  This braid fits that criteria, so I'm spinning it fairly fine, possibly for socks.  It's fun to spin a bit of colour sometimes.  This is definitely colourful.

One of the cats was eyeing the red needle felted gnome.  Since it is a gift, I decided to make a second one, just in case a cat had it's way with the first one.    I'd hate to have to make one in a rush just before I needed it, because a cat had turned it into a cat toy.  I'm not sure I like this little guys puffy cheeks.    They were supposed to be part of a big nose, but obviously, I didn't get them quite properly positioned.  They would have been too big for a nose anyway, so it's probably for the best.

I made awesome gluten-free ginger cookies.  They were all eaten, so no photo but thankfully I have the recipe stuck to the fridge, so all is good for future cookie making.
I'd planned to make guitar straps for all my musician kids, their spouses, a friend and us as Christmas gifts.  Between all of us it would be a total of 8 guitar straps, 2 mandolin straps and 1 banjo strap.   I'd envisioned a big basket with the various straps, labelled with sizes and instrument for the kids to choose from.  I thought it was a smart move to buy natural cotton and dye it all the colours I wanted, in the amounts needed and whip them up on my inkle loom... Wrong!   Dyeing cotton isn't difficult, but it is time consuming.  The dark colours take lots of dye and it takes forever to rinse the colours out.  The dyes bind with the water as well as the fibre so it takes twice as much dye and I ended up rinsing for 2 days.  That was after the process of setting the dyes which is either hours in the pot with the dye, or simmering for 2 hours.   Next time I will buy the yarns predyed.  As far as I'm concerned, it is only worth the process to do spectacular multi coloured effects or if you can't get the colour you want. 

  Even then it isn't for sure.   The pretty blue was supposed to be purple.  I followed all the steps for a 50-50 red/blue blend purple, but most of the red just didn't take.  It was fine when I used it for the pink, which looked like it was going to come out hot pink, but rinsed to the colour I'd been looking for.
So how many of those straps are done for?   Part of only one!   My inkle loom is pretty but the sizing is slightly off, making the heddles, when made the way is suggested by tying over two specific pegs, too big.  This means the shed is really tiny and awkward to use.  I should have measured everything and made a little heddle frame to size once I realized this but it was in the middle of a project.   Then the fussing keeps causing the weaving to slide to the end of the pegs, so you have to keep pushing it back.  I don't know if it is a function of the loom or the width that I need to weave.  So I have 1 ugly strap made, but haven't found enough hardware locally and the piece of leather I thought I had for the end taps isn't actually there anymore.  Needless to say, I think the guitar straps, while a good idea, are for next year.   I'm thinking of trying to weave some of them up as a rep weave on the big loom.