Saturday, March 7, 2015

The Dye Pot






I've been busy with the dye pot again.

I call them my experiments. It feels like I am a scientist, madly working 
in my lab.

So I had some indigo and white fabric
and I wanted to see what it would 
look like dyed. As you can see from
the first picture, I laid some silk
ribbon and coins on the cloth. Then 
I rolled it up around a copper tube.

Meanwhile in the kitchen I had a 
large pot of water boiling to which
I added turmeric. Love turmeric, it 
is good for you too.

So once I had rolled the cloth around
the copper tube, I tied it on, varying
the spaces between ties. 

I then stuck it in the pot and boiled away for an hour. I turned the pot
off and left it to sit for 24 hours. 
After 24 hours I took the cloth out,
unrolled it and hung to dry. 

I like the lines the silk cloth made
on the fabric and the yellow color.
The copper coins did not show up,
or change the color of the dye. I'm
not sure why, but I will leave that 
to the chemists and just enjoy the
fabric. 

Note: I did run it through the dryer
and I pressed it to heat set the color.

Also, once I removed the fabric 
from the pot, I rinsed it out.

Hope you will try dyeing with 
natural products. It is great fun.

Have a good week. 

Sue

4 comments:

  1. we were synchronized today. i was dyeing with black walnuts. i love that first image and how you attached the silk ribbon. and you got beautiful results. i haven't dyed in awhile but a quilting friend gave me a bag of black walnuts so i could no longer resist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it's such fun to experiment with dyes. I have dyed with black walnuts, the results are terrific. Hope to see what you dye soon on your blog.

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