Dye Along

Sandy, Pam and I did a dye along yesterday. Sandy worked in her studio in Oregon, Pam and I in my studio here in Tennessee. We chose three stock colors (Sabraset Scarlet, ProChem Washfast Acid (PW for short) Bright Orange and PW Ivy) that we would all use plus one extra of our own choosing. My extra color was PW Brilliant Violet. Even though we started with the same colors we decided we could mix or dilute them to our liking. We'll swap, spin and knit from these, blogging along as we go. We were interested in seeing how different our stuff could get using the same materials. BTW, this is all on superwash colonial fiber. Check out Sandy and Pam's progress.



Using the cold pour method, I grouped my warm and cool colors in mini gradations. I wanted there to be a large area of brilliant color with smaller areas of muted ones. I got that funky tobacco brown by mixing brite orange and ivy...tres cool. Brilliant violet dilutes to a very clear light violet, and I really like how it balances the denser looking hues of scarlet and ivy. I left a fair amount of water in my roving so the colors could migrate before striking. This helped to make beautifully intense colorbands with none of the pale spots that superwash is prone to. To my surprise, scarlet and ivy are true compliments, so mixed in equal amounts they really make grey...as I found out when I went to mix aubergine (Sandy and I are aubergine freaks from way back). These colors are pretty, but much deeper than I had envisioned, so I tried a lighter version.

This time I poured several dilutions of Ivy first, then spotted the white areas with various dilutions of the other colors. I didn't mix them to mute this time, just added water. I love the effect. I was inspired by a quilt in Kaffe Fassett's Museum Quilts. I'm hoping I can spin this to resemble some of those fabrics.

BTW, Pam and I were of the same mind and wore almost indentical socks. Pam's are merino/tencel she spun and knit from a Sandy roving. Mine are from superwash colonial I dyed.

Now we get to spin! I'm going to make yarns to knit Sandy's mitts below.