Dying Some Silk

I am teaching a class next week and needed to dye some more silk for embellishment.

I had looked in my silk box to see what I had and I seem to have a lot of green and not much pink/purple.

I use a variation on the scrunch dying I use for the scarf blanks. I soak the silk in a little soapy water to get them properly wet before dying.

I use just enough fibre reactive dye to cover the silk. Then leave it for about an hour and put the PH up (sodium carbonate) in. I mix the PH up one tablespoon for each cup of water including the water I am mixing it in. Then I let it sit for a few hours.

One of the colours I wanted was a nice brown but when I rinsed it all the brown stayed in the water and I had purple. I haven’t had that happen before.

This is what they look like after rinsing and squeezing all the water out, they look a mess.

After they are dry, they fluff up some, but still not very nice looking

Next, you shake them out a bit and give them a tug along their length. Now they are pretty. again. Now I have a good variety for my students to choose from. The top one is the one that should have been brown.

I think I am just about ready for the class. Just some plastic to cut and pack it all up.

 

 

Scarves Done, Well, Almost

The felting part of the scarves is all done. I have moved to adding buttons. A friend helped me pick out all the buttons at our guild social On Monday night. At one point we had lots of buttons out of the bags on the table as we poked through them in search of just the right button. Unfortunately no picture of that. Jan got a great close up of this button we were trying on this scarf. Actually all these pictures were taken by Jan Scott except the 2 of her and her new wheel.

Here is a picture of part of the social. There was spinning and weaving and knitting and wheel adjusting, probably other stuff too.

And Jan brought her new wheel. It is an electric spinner and it fits in a small plastic container. It is as portable as a spindle. There were lots of oos and ahhs as she showed it off.

And lastly 3 great pictures of my scarves, thanks to Jan.

I hope you like all the pictures. Now I have to get on with the finishing, the hardest part.

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