Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Fabric and Fiber arts’ Category

Gee, it would help if I’d think of things to write about as I am doing them, so that I can take photos!

Duh. Anyhow, because today turned into a rainy day and I didn’t have anything else I needed to do I decided to dye some shirts.

Little short excursion into shirts for a bit here… I’ve been trying to buy Fruit of the Loom pocket tee’s for Ron for a while now. In white, they have to be white. Walmart USED to carry them, but now all they have are colors. So, last weekend I did a search on Amazon, came up with a few… but more importantly I happened to look at a “sponsored link” on the page. JiffyShirts.com was the link and so I checked it out. Well, howdy! They have the FOTL shirts I want, and reasonably priced… and SUPER reasonably priced shipping. So I ordered 15 of them. I ordered on Saturday and they were here on Tuesday. Considering that they only ship during the week, that was astounding!

Today I looked at some of their other shirts. They carry the same ones I buy from Dharma, only cheaper, not to mention way less shipping. I think I’ve found a new shirt supplier. Dharma is in California, I can get dyes from closer so less shipping… I may not be ordering much from Dharma this year.

Another thing I did today was this morning I went to Walmart. Clearance is right by the pool supplies and I knew I needed Soda Ash. Guess what was just opposite the pool supplies? FOTL pocket tees in white. Four shirts in a pack for $9.50. I got the only two packages in Ron’s size that they had. Sheesh. Well, at least now he won’t be running out of shirts for a long while! LOL!

So, on to dyeing. First, we prewash the shirts. Hottest water, some Synthrapol or laundry detergent, and sometimes I put some soda ash in the wash, too. You just want to make sure that any manufacturing chemicals or dirt are off the fabric. Leave the fabric damp.

Mix your dyes up. For cotton fabrics and shirts you want Procion MX dyes. Cover your work area with newspaper and wearing a dust mask and gloves, mix the colors you want to use. I fill canning jars devoted to dyeing about 1/2 full of lukewarm water and then add the dye powder to that. I guess you are supposed to add the water to the dye, but I like to measure the water first and then dump the dye in. Some people advise to paste up the dye too, but I never have. Stir, stir, stir and then stir some more. Various colors can be hard to dissolve. Some never completely dissolve and can leave tiny dye spots on your fabric. Fuchsia is a problem color, so I sometimes filter it with a piece of nylon stocking. Didn’t bother today. You want 2 to 4 teaspoons of dye per cup of water for most colors… I use a VERY heaping teaspoon to sort of standardize my colors. It’s best to weigh the dye, but that is also a lot of trouble and I think the less time the dye powder has to float around, the better.

I use various things to dye IN for LWI. Ice Cream buckets work great for most things, but I also use wide mouth canning jars, plastic canisters and various saved jars that are large enough to take a shirt or two. All are dedicated to dyeing, never used for anything else. You want your fabric or shirt to fit fairly tight in the container, but still have room to be adding liquid. Ice cream buckets are pretty perfect. Free, too, and we don’t even eat ice cream that much… I get em from Ron’s family.

So, we’ve got a couple of damp shirts squished into an ice cream bucket. Now comes the fun and messy part of it. Pour dye on top of the fabric in random patterns. If you are patient and don’t want to make much of a mess, then foam brushes work great for applying the dye to fabric. That’s what I use when I’m doing classic tie dye. For most of the shirts I do in buckets, though, I just dump some out of the jar I mixed in. It can be messy, with drips down the side of the jar but I keep a damp rag handy. Two colors, sometimes more, but you do want to pick colors that will play well together because they are going to get mixed around on that shirt.

It takes about 1/2 to 1 cup of dye per average shirt for nice bright colors. Let it sit for a while, and see if it looks like dye has migrated to the bottom. If not, you can add more dye to it or just some water to help things along, but that will dilute the dye a bit. You do want to see color at the bottom of your bucket, but NOT the shirt swimming in liquid. I have added dye/water to about 1 inch in the ice cream bucket, but usually have a lot less than that.

You can let this sit for a few hours, or just an hour or so depending on how much dye and water you’ve added. It can be hard to judge for a beginner, so, to make sure your color has migrated enough you can put on gloves and carefully pick up bits of fabric. Some bits look white? That’s fine, it’ll make your colors pop. Major areas are white? You need more dye and/or water to help the dye move along. It will move some more after you fix it, so don’t get too carried away. We aren’t going for solid colors… LWI is way too interesting to just get one plain color.

After the dye has migrated to your satisfaction, it’s time to fix it. Mix 1 cup of soda ash (sodium carbonate) to one gallon warm water. Stir until completely dissolved… which can take a while as it wants to lump up. Pour into your dye bucket until your shirts are completely submerged…. or would be, if they didn’t float. Don’t stir or anything else! And don’t worry if it looks all muddy at this point. You won’t use the whole gallon of soda ash water unless you’ve got 4 or more shirts in buckets and jars, but it won’t go to waste. It keeps forever and is actually a good addition to the washer when you are washing something really grimy.

I cut the rims of the ice cream bucket lids off and use the center piece as plates to hold down my shirts… using other jars full of water on top for weight. You can also just use a jar of water… or even another bucket with some water in a pinch. Be careful not to put too much weight in and overflow everything all over the place! (Messy is one reason I do most of my dye work outside)

Now, we let the buckets sit. A few hours if you are impatient, overnight if you are not. Temperature is important. For dyeing with MX dyes you always want to be at least 70 degrees F. Higher is better. The warmer it is, the less time you need to let it sit… so outside in the sun on a summer day, then an hour or two is plenty. Cooler and we want to let it sit longer. Or warm it up. I have been known to put buckets of shirts into the microwave after adding the soda ash fixer, then nuking for 30 seconds at a time until it feels hot. Then let sit until completely cool. If your house is cooler than 70, a heating pad under the bucket or jar is a safer way than the microwave of keeping things warm. :)

The soda ash has to migrate all through the fabric and dye mixture so that the dye will bond with the fabric. But it tends to do that pretty quickly if your container is large enough to add soda ash water until the fabric floats. If, like I did today, you have a ladies shirt squished into a quart jar…. well, you probably want to let that sit for the full overnight thing. It’s always better to let it sit as long as possible… that way the dye will completely react and wash out the excess better. If you’ve ever dyed with protein dyes, using MX dyes will be a shock… the dye comes out, comes out, comes out. You think it’s never going to quit, but it does if you rinse properly. Acid dyes bind with the fiber in the heat…. we saw my dye pot go clear. MX dyes never do that… the water is always going to have unbound dye in it.

So, once the shirts have set in the dye and then the soda ash solution long enough to react… it’s time to rinse. First you rinse in cold water. This is just to get the soda ash out of the shirts. I did it in the bathtub this time, but you can just dump your shirts into the washer filled with cold water and run the cycle. I like to rinse first in a bucket…. rinse, rinse… let soak a bit, rinse some more and then squeeze out.

After the first rinse, you wash. HOT water and detergent/Synthrapol. This is where Synthrapol is better… it pushes the excess dye out of the fabric and keeps it from landing back on the fabric. Hot water is better for getting the excess dye molecules away, too. It’s all about chemistry, and I’m not a chemist…. so I trust the ones who are. :)

Wash in hot, rinse in cold. A batch of 6 shirts or so is not a full load, but I usually run the washer like it is. If I’ve got more shirts dyed, I rinse them better before dropping them into the washer. You will probably find that you need to run 2 full cycles of the wash to get the excess dye out. I usually then turn it to rinse one more time and put in some fabric softener. Soda Ash is hard on fabrics and can make them feel rough if you don’t do a final rinse with softener.

Then you dry… and ready to wear!

If you have any questions, please ask! I know I can skip around a lot.

Hugs,
Vyx

I liked my little blue purse so well that I thought I’d do another one.

This time changing up the pattern a bit, make the purse a bit larger and different colors.

I decided on pink and black. Had to mail order the fun fur, as no one carries it locally. Managed to find wool in the right colors at Hancock Fabrics… the only local store with a good selection of wool!

This is going to be my last knitting/felting project for a while. I need to do some stamping as I’m way behind on rak backs.

Anyhow, before and after photos…

Before felting… and then the bottom before felting, so you can see that this one is rectangular rather than square.

Just out of the washer!

And finally… with the little blue purse. Quite a size difference!

I guess I’m going to have to take it to work with me Monday, to show it off… then call Candice to come get her new purse. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

I dyed more yarn yesterday and today. I mentioned that this time I was going to be using acid dye, rather than mx dye. I love how it works… the yarn just sucks all the dye out of the water!

With mx dyes there is always a lot of wash out. Excess dye that didn’t bind to the fabric and has to be rinsed out. Not so with acid dyes!

So I took some photos. This first one is of the yarn going into the murky dye pot. I left a bit sticking out so you could see the color it was. (pale lime green, almost yellow, yuck!)

When the water gets to a certain temperature, the dye magically disappears into the yarn. (the magic temp was 150 F for me) The water was still faintly blue, but you can see all the way to the bottom! Couldn’t do that before!

That was so cool… I mean, I was expecting it to happen, did quite a bit of reading online before attempting to dye wool… but still, nothing like seeing it in real life!

The almost dried yarn looks like this next photo, a very blue green. It’s also quite tangled, I didn’t tie off the yarn more like I’d done with longer skeins in the coral to red/brown batch. I tied off the second batch of this with some cotton yarn before putting it into the dye pot, though. Can’t be having a bunch of tangled yarn! (sorry about that, Jan, it’s gonna be a chore winding this)

Second batch is cooling in the dye bath and will get rinsed/washed as soon as I can put my hand into the water and have it not feel too warm. Sometime before bedtime, I hope, so that it can dry overnight and get mailed early this week. Er, of course Jan may not approve of this color… so I may be doing over and changing it somewhat. Hey, but at least it’s not pale yucky lime any more!

Lastly for tonight… while I was waiting on dye bath to cool down yesterday I finished knitting my hat. Now, previously I’ve only knitted 2 fun fur scarves and a purse that got felted. Just basic garter stitch, aside from a few rows of purling on the purse. I was sort of experimenting on this hat I made with cheap acrylic yarn… to see if I might like knitting anything fancier than just plain old knitting every row. I do love knitting in the round… if I had to do stockinette stitch by switching between purling and knitting it would NEVER come out as even as it does with circular needles. I knit very tightly, and I purl very loosely. Switching between those, like for the ribbing… Big Holes. But as you can see, I managed to do some more garter stitch that came out pretty good.

The bottom of the hat was done back and forth until I wanted to switch to stockinette, then I went to knitting in the round. I think it came out pretty good, considering I was knitting without a pattern. It’s not as long as it should be, I underestimated how far it would go when I got to decreasing at the top. The decreasing bit was fun… I realized about the 3rd round that it was NEVER going to work continuing on the circular needle. Switched over to DPN’s and went a little smaller because my bamboo DPN’s are in metric and the corresponding American size was actually a bit larger. It’s easier to switch to smaller needles than to larger needles when you knit as tightly as I do.

While knitting the hat I also tried to train myself to knit in the continental style, with the yarn held in the left hand. I got good at it… but my rows got tighter and tighter and I had to switch back to right hand yarn after the 3rd round or so. Could BARELY get the needle in at that point. It’s probably just a matter of practice… I’ve also taught myself a bad habit knitting the hat. Using my fingertips to poke at the tips of the needles while working stitches. I’ve got a fairly well bruised right index finger, so with my next project (already started) I’m trying to untrain myself at that. Hey, I’ve got so I can sort of watch tv while knitting… long as I remember to look over the reading glasses when I look at the tv, lol!

Expecting Ron’s daughter Candice to come over in a little while… she needs to use the computer… plus I want to talk to her. My new project is something I think she’ll like… but it may have to be the next project after this one. We’ll see.

Hugs,
Vyx

So, two weekends ago I dyed some wool yarn for my friend Jan. I used procion mx dye, which is mainly for cotton and other fibers of that sort but will work on protein fibers if done in the right way. (using acid to fix the dye, rather than soda ash like on cotton… you can’t use soda ash on wool, but you can on silk)

Before I dyed all the yarn I did a couple of test runs on short bits of yarn. The color came out beautiful.

Not so when it came down to the actual yarn. I got a big shock… the yarn came out MUCH darker than I expected and while the color was pretty much the same color… there were also whole sections of the skeins that came out even darker… totally a different color than I was going for.

It looks horrible in this photo… the actual yarn is much better. My camera skills are not that great, and I was shooting with no natural light. But still, you can see what the sample looked like on top there. And how the actual yarn is quite a bit darker.

I was all AUGH AUGH! However, my experience in dyeing stuff allowed me to dye all that wool in TWO batches and have it come out pretty much exactly the same. Even down to dark spots. That was part luck, part skill and frankly pretty amazing. I =do= have skills! Hand dyeing any sort of fiber can be a gamble to get the same color on repeat, but I was very careful measuring everything out… and even the boiling of the yarn.

The first batch took over 6 hours to get up to a simmer. My instructions said to heat slowly, so slowly is what I did… VERY slowly. That’s probably why the yarn got so much darker than I expected. I was worried about felting the yarn in the dye pot, so extra careful.

The next day I did the second batch. I didn’t use the simmer burner for that batch, but I still took it very slow… even after re-reading my instructions. The instructions say bring from room tempurature up to a simmer over a 45 minute period. Somehow I missed that snippet the first dye batch! But I’m trying to exactly duplicate the first dye batch… so very, very slow again. Probably only 4 hours to simmer though, not 6 or more, hah!

One of the reasons I did the yarn in two batches is that a POUND of wool is actually quite a bit of yarn. It would all fit into my 4 gallon stainless pot, but not swish around very easily. You can’t stir it too much or risk felting… but to not stir could mean the yarn at the bottom getting too hot from the burner. So, having it move around more freely is a good thing.

Up this weekend… the lime green yarn gets a transformation. Another horrid photo… and the test is way too dark so I’m going to use a lot less dye to start out.

This, however, is an acid dye. That means it’s MADE to dye wool, unlike my procion mx dye. From what I’ve been reading, when I hit that sweet spot in tempurature…. the dye will all disappear from the dye bath and go right into the yarn. In other words…. instead of a murky dye bath the water will turn =clear=!

How cool is that? I can’t wait to see it happen! I’m going to start with 1/8th of a cup of (mixed up) dye for 1/2 pound of wool. It’s a beautiful spruce… blue green. At a lower strength than full strength dye like the sample it should come out amazing. Of course any other color than that pale lime will be great, lol!

Back to the mx dye on wool… I used Dharma Trading Company’s “Chocolate Brown”. I’ve used this on silk with vinegar, and it comes out a really nice maroon… pretty much like the test bits on the wool did. It’s a mixture, tho, not a true color. But still, I expected it would work nicely on the wool, and it did on the tests. Lots darker on the wool and actually made brown in bits. Very red brown, but still. The odd thing, in my opinion, was when the dye bath had cooled and I got to rinse out…. the water left in the dye bath was cobalt blue. I’m thinking that must be a component of the mixture… and it doesn’t take on wool (or silk) when used with acid. Cobalt Blue mx is one of my favorite dye colors… not as useful for mixing as Turquoise is, but splendid by itself. Works great on silk when used with soda ash instead of vinegar. Just a brilliant dark, and slightly green, blue. It is one of the better mx dyes, and not a mixture.

So, that’s my little story of dyeing wool yarn. Did I tell ya I was saying AUGH AUGH AUGH when I was rinsing the yarn? Seriously freaking out. Then I got to mail it to my friend and cower while waiting her email when she opened the box. Jan loves it, and I get to try again with pale lime yarn. That’s my plan for this weekend, when it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow.

Hugs,
Vyx

I felted my new purse this afternoon. It’s laying on the dryer air drying now.

(glasses in photo for scale this time, lol!)

It’s QUITE sturdy, I’m sure knitting with 2 strands of wool and only adding the others helped that a lot.

My handle is quite lumpy… should have expected that, as the fancy yarn I got is quite varied in size. Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering: Nashua Handknits “Sitar” is the fancy yarn, in Deep Blue Seas color. It’s only 50% wool, but felted up quite nicely along with the regular wool.

Here is a shot of the top with a piece of unfelted i-cord using the same yarns.

And finally, a photo of the bottom so you can see how the knitting disappeared. It’s amazing! I’ve never felted anything before… and knowing how it’s supposed to work is a lot different than actually doing it and seeing for yourself.

Now I’m off on a hunt for a small coin purse to knit and felt… to use up the last of the yarns, of course. And then I think I’ll knit a hat. A hat should be almost as easy as this purse was, right? :)

hugs,
Vyx

(next up, learn continental knitting…it just looks so much easier)

P.S. All photos enlarge when you click on them… I forget to remind people about that.