Finishing up the Dye Days

After the creative part of dyeing the silk warps is done, the warps sit wrapped up in plastic wrap for 24 hours.  Then the rinsing begins, just plain water to start moving out the excess dye, then a couple of drops of Synthrapol soap is added to the final rinse to remove every last speck of loose dye.

The silk warp comes out of the rinsing process in a bit of a tangled ball.  Luckily, it is really easy to fix, just grab the ends and a couple of flicks the warp is laying flat and smooth, ready to hang and dry.

The first lot of 8 silk warps are with the 2/22 silk.  There is a couple of different painting styles on show here.  There is a long curve of colour, half and half colour and random colour splashes, anything and everything goes when dyeing like this.   There is a lot of colour here!

Since we had the dyes out I also over dyed a scarf, it was white cotton and lime green silk.  I over dyed it with navy blue Procion MX dye.  It was a multi step process but easy, just a lot of stirring.  The dye bath method took about two hours and then straight to rinsing.

This is the second lot of 8 silk warps.  There is a mix of tussah silk and a camel/silk blend.  The camel/silk blend is wonderfully soft and I’m quite excited to work with it.

I didn’t get a photo of the third lot of silk warps, I guess I’m still a little rusty in the blog making!  But here is a final photo of all the warps together.  What a wonderful range of colours!

I’m a little disappointed on how the over dyed silk scarf went.  I think that the container that I used was a little small, the instructions said to use a container that allowed the material to float freely and I thought that I had.  But the scarf has marks of where the material bent and it is lighter on one side.  So I guess that it is mine now!

Final garden photo is a Hydrangea paniculata 'Vanille Fraise' the shrub is over 8 feet tall and the heads are at least 1 foot in length.  The flowers start as white in the summer then as the nights get cooler they start to pinken.   We had a heavy rain a few weeks ago, so they are being supported a bit now. It is a spectacular highlight to the start of the autumn in the garden.