Dyeing Scraps

Last week I visited my friend Dawn, who is a local artist. Dawn loves to work with scraps. She had told me awhile back that she had some scraps for me to dye for both of us. Of course, I wasn’t expecting it to be three large bags!

The bags had different fabrics from silks to cottons. I decided I’d start with the large blue bag of cotton scraps. I wanted to see what all she had in the bags so I dumped part of the blue bag’s content on my dyeing table.

Now to pick through, choosing just one fabric, the natural-colored cotton. I’m using some dye I’ve mixed up several months ago. Dawn suggested dyeing a variety of hues, so I dyed four different colors in three different shades. In the past I would have measured, but I just felt like winging this.

What I did was use the dye water solution – 5 grams of dye to one cup of water. I’ve used these containers for years and they are perfect. One dyeing container had just some straight dye water. For the other two containers I added water and some of the dye solution. As I said, I did this on the fly – just adding as much as I wanted. It was fun not having to measure – just see what happens.

 

Since the dye water was old I left the fabric to soak overnight. And here are the results, before ironing.

I look forward to seeing these fabrics in some of her new creations. I’ll be dyeing more for her and for me.

I wanted to show you what I received in the mail from my friend Sherrie in Tucson.  I had sent her sticks from my yard since she was having trouble finding some in her area. She made this spirit doll for me for sending the sticks. Isn’t she cute?

Sherrie sells her spirit dolls on her website if you are interested in welcoming one into your home. Here is the link to her website.

It felt so good to get back in the dye studio. I’m hoping I’ll be getting back to my art soon. Thanks for dropping by. Have a great week!

Linking to Off The Wall Friday. Check out more inspiration here.