How to dye 60-100 yards of fabric in a few hours
As promised here is my first post with some more details about how I dye my fabric. These are not going to be presented in any sort of logical order but instead the order I felt like writing about them. So look for several dyeing posts over the next few weeks, in between other content.
First off my dyeing is based on Ann Johnston’s book Color By Accident
I will not be repeating the information she has in her book. I strongly recommend you buy it and read it for yourself. But I will be talking about how I’ve modified her techniques to work for me.
To dye 60-100 yards of fabric in a few hours I user her technique of stacking fabrics one on top of another in the same bin. So follow the directions I have on the DIY website for the first layer of fabric. After a while take a second yard of fabric and lay it on top of the first and mush it around to soak up all the dye leftover from the first piece. Wait a bit and add the soda ash. Repeat for as many layers as you want noting that they get lighter as you add more fabric.
This bin has 3 different yellows:
Note that you will not get a perfect gradation of colors as you do this. Some dye molecules are larger than others so they bond quicker with the fabrics. It will probably take you some time and experimenting to see what happens and to anticipate these changes. But as with all of my dyeing I’m not looking for reproducible results, just gorgeous fabric. When your dark red has a light green 4 layers above it is at first puzzling. But you will eventually learn that reds are the first to go. Over time you learn to adjust for this in the process to get the colors you want.
With 4 layers of fabric in each bin (I dye 1 yard pieces of fabric) I only need 20 bins to hold 80 yards of fabric. Here’s what my table looked like after my last session (note that I don’t use fancy expensive containers for my dyeing – look for the freebies at garage sales – it doesn’t have look pretty – but remember – do not use any containers or equipment from your kitchen):
It takes me 3-4 hours to do the initial dyeing. I then let it cure over night and I find it works best if it sits in the sun at some point. In another post I’ll describe how I rinse all of this out as efficiently as possible.
Posted by Lisa in: Quilting Process
Thank you so much for sharing your techniques. I always wondered how on earth you could dye so much fabric in one day! I found it a struggle to dye 15 to 20 yards in one day, but then again I was using a different technique. I will have to give your method a try this weekend. I will be looking forward to more tips!
Just seeing all that gets me all itching to dye something. I’d like to try your method to get lots of variations. Look forward to seeing more posts on dyeing because after Dec. 1, I’d like to do some fun stuff instead of just working towards deadlines! Thanks.
Hey, Lisa! Nice to see all those plastic containers filled with color. I’m busy sewing sleeves on quilts – what a waste of time when I could be in the print studio. Oh, well. Fun to see your process — and no two people do it the same way. Are those empty soda bottles?
Thanks for sharing your techniques, Lisa…it’s really so interesting. It seems so much more efficient to dye large quantities rather than a little here and there. I like that your process is flexible…a little science and a lot of art!
Lisa, might I assume that you dye your own cloth for precision (i.e. the only way of getting exactly what you want), or is something else at play here?
Questions about colourfastness also occur to me. Dyes are notoriously unstable. To use language from a different world, do you make archival cloth, or cloth that you expect to change with time and exposure to light?
Patty – looking forward to hearing if this works for you. I should have another post this evening after I got to a friends art opening.
Pam – your show will be wonderful – I wish I could come out and see it!
Rayna – they are empty water bottles. I never buy bottled water (how stupid, and environmentally unsound, is it to put water in a bottle, put it in a truck and ship it across the country) but these are perfect for mixing the dye solutions so I bought a case a few years back.
Cynthia – the only science is the chemical reaction – my part is all about flexibility. In January I’ll show you in person!
Colin – these are fiber reactive dyes – so there is a chemical bond between the fiber molecule and the dye. They are about as good as you can get in fabric when it comes to dyeing. Paint will certainly hold it’s color better but then it interferes with the hand of the fabric. You definitely don’t want to display the resulting quilt in direct sun and over time even in good light conditions it will fade. Some quilters spray their quilts with UV protectors to slow this down. So we do expect it. But I use the highest quality fabric and dyes so I expect them to last a good long time if cared for properly.
I dye my own fabrics because I do want to create the colors I want – but precision isn’t quite the right word for it. It’s a very intuitive process for me – I usually mix the colors without plan – so my resulting work has to use those colors – so in a way it is a limitation – but a self imposed limitation. I do not use recipes so I can never repeat my work. Although I’ve been doing this long enough I have a fairly good feel for how to make a similar color (although not always – with the layering I describe here it is not always an easy thing to figure out – and I use 2-4 basic blues, reds and yellows so they all react differently).
But I enjoy the process, quilting is a very dry orderly process (at least how I do it). Sometimes it’s fun to just make a huge wet sloppy mess. And it is considerably cheaper – at $3 a yard for the fabric and maybe $2 for dye, chemicals and water that beats paying someone else $20-$25 a yard for their hand dyes.
Handdyed fabrics look different than commercially purchased solids. The commercial solids are just that – solid colors – they are very flat. Handdyes are mottled and each dyer has their own look – it depends on how you mush the dye around in the buckets what you get. I do prefer to use only handdyed solids but there is a whole group of folks that use the dyeing(or surface design) as the means to the end.
Lisa, one of the things that I don’t like about digital photography is that you have an infinite number of colours in the machine (provided you know how to retrieve them of course). In contrast, when I choose a film (colour or mono) I have already limited my options considerably. One then works with what there is. I hadn’t thought to find a parallel here, but I have…..you don’t have a pantone swatch in front of you when you start, because you have already limited yourself.
I suspected that you might enjoy the sloppy mess bit too.
Interesting analogy Colin. I had never thought of in those terms. I know very little about photography – just enough to try to shoot my own artwork. I used to switch between agfa and fuji when photographing different pieces of my work depending on the colors in the quilt. I had a professional shoot my work a few times and I wasn’t happy with the results. It all looked yellow (and not at all like my work in real life) – I bet he was using kodak.
I find when painting I have too many color choices – I can mix up anything right there on the spot. It’s both freeing and overwhelming.
And who can resist making a mess :)
This may be a stupid question, but – have you added the first lot of soda ash before adding the second fabric to the bin?
Thanks
Claire not a stupid question – see this post for the answer.