Dyeing Again

Chris Fletcher came over yesterday and we had a dyeing day in the garage. I wanted to see how well the indigo vat had kept and the answer is not very. Things did not come out the nice very dark blue as they did ten days ago. The rack on the left shows some of our results although there is a fair amount of Procion MX there too.  Part of the problem was me trying to dye some polycotton which had not been scoured first. In addition to what you see on the left, there is a whole lot of  2/20 Tencel yarn (200 gms) which is sitting in Procion  for 24 hours. This is more weft for the Tencel curtains - see later.

My sister, Dorothy tells me that polycotton does not dye well. What with all the dying/printing/etc etc that has happened in the last few weeks, I have no pure cotton or calico left so today I will go to Newent to a quilting shop and get some - and wash it first!! I have some pots of Procion MX dye left over and will finish them up. Besides I need some needles. I have managed to wreck several needles doing Japanese style bookbinding. And I need some curved needles for bookbinding. I have managed to mislay 3 of them in the house somewhere which is quite distressing. So I bought myself a needle book to live with the book binding kit.

Chris did lots of dying, including a piece of slub silk fabric which she has sewn up shibori-style. This did come out a lovely shimmering blue. She went home with lots of plastic bags containing wet yarn and cloth and three small buckets containing yarn in three different autumnal colours in Procion dye.

I have reviewed the calculations for the Tencel curtains and got round to producing a draft for it. The final weaving should be nothing like as lurid as this. The warp is space dyed 2/20 Tencel from Just Our Yarns and is darker and much more subtle that the colours shown here. The self pink which I have dyed is very close to the colour of the 'pink' warp. My idea is that it would shimmer. I shall start on warping up the Megado soon - probably Saturday.

There is nothing on the Megado and Kombo now and what is on the Voyager is for a beginning weaver - she starts tomorrow. So the Voyager is warped up with white 2/6 cotton and she has a red 2/6 cotton for weft to try out simple tabby and twills.