Everybody’s Talking Sewing

I LOVE SILK! I love the feel, the drape, the versatility - and most of all, I love dyeing it. I get shivers just thinking about it.

Hey! I heard that - I’m not weird, I’m unique.

Last year I decided to dye a bunch of 14″ x 72″ Habotai 8mm silk scarves as holiday gifts.

There were several reasons for it:

1. Nothing beats a hand-made gift, especially when it’s silk
2. No two were the same, and you won’t find anything like it on a store shelf
3. I got to play!

So about a month before Christmas, I got in my silk scarf blanks, new dyes, different kinds of salts (table, Kosher, rock), and Wintergreen rubbing alcohol.

I set up in the sewing room with saw-horses and a board. The board was covered in mid-weight plastic that could be either wiped down or easily removed and replaced as needed.

I could now only walk on one side of the room along the board. I have got to get a bigger sewing room!

The pictures you see here (nice and large) were my favorites. I ended up doing 15 scarves, and the biggest problem was keeping the fur-kids away as I worked. You would have thought I was depriving them of food and water the way they carried on! Gads they’re spoiled.

All my dyeing is done by hand; I don’t do vat dyeing. That means that every color is separately applied with ‘something’ and so are any additional effect like using the salts or alcohol.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with vat dyeing, I simply don’t enjoy doing it.

The dyes I use are non-toxic and come premixed in most cases. Some are concentrates, but I never use powders. Between my asthma, tons of allergies, and the fur-kids, I’m extremely careful - and that cancels out working with powders. I can even work without gloves as long as I don’t mind brightly colored hands. I don’t.

So here I dyed all these great looking scarves and included pictures of them in the December Wearable Update Newsletter. Next thing I knew, I had requests to buy them!

Yeah, I was flattered - I was also pretty speechless.

Every single one of them sold. I’d never-ever even tried to sell my dyed pieces! I’d used them for competition garments, samples, and gifts.

One of the women, Nancy, bought 4 of the them and sent a picture of the happy group at Christmas. Have I mentioned how much I love what I do?

Um, I had to remake all the Christmas gifts. Everyone got three different kinds of herbal bath soak. And I made sure that there was enough left over for me too!

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Many years ago - back when you could still purchase good cotton for $2.99 a yard - I found myself extremely frustrated with the colors offered. You know what I mean: I didn’t want blue - I wanted sapphire blue, and I wanted a mix of emerald green / royal purple with speckles of burgundy swirled throughout. Of course I wasn’t going to find what I wanted, so I decided “I’ll make my own.”

The fact that I had no idea what I was doing made it a perfect Annie project. I got a catalogue from Dharma Trading and poured over the pages of dyes.

At the time I had three dogs and two cats - along with a ton of allergies - so non-toxic dyes were a must. This meant eliminating everything that to had be mixed. I also didn’t want the hassle of steam-setting the dyed fabric (I’m lazy).

My only rule was that different brands had to work together; one company might have a better green while another a terrific maroon – they had to play nicely. Yes I could and do mix my own colors, but I still like a nice variety to start from.

My dyes of choice might not be yours - personal preferences. At the time I was completely hooked on Deka Silk. I could dye everything from 100% silk to 100% polyester beautifully. I even taught some classes using these dyes.

A few years ago the company stopped importing to the U.S. Yeah that was my screaming you heard. So I’m still experimenting with different dyes; my current favorite is Marabu-silk (which I just discovered is not in the newest catalogue). Sigh.

Here’s some basic guidelines for dyeing your fabric masterpiece:

1. If you want your dyes to hold always pre-wash your fabric - get rid of that finish
2. Very wet fabric means paler colors and not many individual color differences
3. Damp fabric allows good blending and separate colors, and the option of using salt or other mediums for various effects
4. Dry fabric means your colors will grab almost instantly and not run or mix together much
5. Your fabric has to be completely dry before heat setting
6. Dog prints and cat-tail swooshes make very interesting designs on fabric (and you thought only leaves worked!)

The amount of fabric I’m dyeing, yardage or smaller pieces, determines whether I use a suspended frame or flat board.

I work outside using a couple of sawhorses, 4 - 1″ x 2″ boards and C-clamps to hold the boards in a rectangular door shape. This ‘door’ rests on the sawhorses. My damp fabric is attached to the wooden frame using rust-proof thumbtacks; you can also buy the real silk suspension clips, tacks or hooks.

I suggest you grab whoever’s around to help get the larger pieces of fabric into place. Having the wet fabric draped over your shoulder as you’re trying to secure it into place feels like you’re wrestling an octopus – and the octopus is winning.

Be sure to have your dyes already set up so can start applying them as soon as the fabric is attached. This method allows a larger piece of fabric to be dyed at one time, but you cannot physically manipulate that piece for wrinkled effects.

When working on boards I use nice large pieces of foam board and cover both sides with Contact Paper. This protects the boards and allows you to use both sides. I’m not only lazy, I’m cheap. Working on the boards allow me to ‘wrinkle’ and scrunch my fabrics.

Here’s what I do:

1. Put my damp fabric on the board and scrunch it up (you have to work at this a bit)
2. Apply a color: splattering, brushing, dotting, flinging, drawing, spraying – however you want to get those colors on your fabric
3. Apply more colors next to or overlapping the previous colors
4. Re-scrunch the fabric a different way
5. Maybe add different salts to ‘pull’ the dyes

For a really wonderful effect that works best on cottons, get some wintergreen isopropyl alcohol – that’s the green stuff. Make sure you have a good variation of light and dark colored dyes on your fabric, scrunch it, and don’t use any salt.

Put it into a spray bottle and only work in a well-ventilated room; do as I say, not as I did. Now spray your fabric with the alcohol – don’t be afraid, spray it! If you watch closely, you can see the dyes moving from the alcohol. After your fabric is dry it looks like sueded cotton: soft, muted, and gorgeous.

To set those dyes gently fold or roll your fabric up into a package that will fit in your oven. If you’re dyeing polyesters, be careful to avoid hard fold lines for this process. Preheat your oven to 200°-250° depending on your fabric; silk batiste 200°, heavy cottons 250°.

Take a piece of foil double your fabric package size and wrap around it. Seal all edges completely as you don’t want to burn your fabric. Bake this package for between 30 and 60 minutes, again depending on the fabric type and size.

When done cooking remove the package and carefully open - It’s Hot and It’s Steaming. Let your fabric cool completely then gently wash and dry it. As long as you heat set correctly you shouldn’t experience any color loss.

Since we’ve barely touched on all the wonderful ways to dye and play with your fabric let me leave you with these thoughts:

Now, go play…

PS If you want to learn more, we have an eBook on Fabric Dyeing and here are some of our fabric dyeing favorites from Amazon.

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