Sherri Woodard Coffey

Violet to scarlet

I’ve always said, that in an ideal world, the dyeing for the next project would be happening as the current project is being woven. Wow! That’s exactly what’s happening right now! I actually can’t believe it myself. Above are part of the series of gradations that I’m working on. they go from violet to scarlet. Then the next batch will go from scarlet to orange. With the orange, I am going to experiment with dyeing in lighter shades. Usually a dye formula is based on 1% of weight of goods, so these will have dyeing at 3/4 and 1/2 of that amount. They may turn out totally ugly, but they can always be overdyed.

I’ve also done something totally sacrilegious. Usually I soak the yarns in detergent, spin them out in the washer, and throw them in the dyepot. I am dyeing the current batch by throwing them in dry! So far, they look good. I am taking care to heat the yarns VERY slowly, using a timer to check on the every 30 minutes. These yarns are singles and not what I usually use, so they are kind of kinky in their natural state. They will weave up just fine, though.

Here’s the current project on the loom.

Green square in progress

I’m having fun weaving this because the colors are so engaging. Plus, I’m still listening to the Larsson book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. It’s also very engaging. My only complaint is that my non-Swedish-speaking brain has trouble keeping up with all the characters. Their names seem very similar sometimes.

In this picture, strips of index cards are holding the spaces that will not be woven. This really does not work very well, so I am going to try cutting a couple of pieces of cardboard to hold the space. Or maybe plastic bag strips, something that will be “gripped” better by the warp. By the way, has anyone bought index cards lately? They’re now only slightly heavier than copy paper. Very disappointing. I would be interested in knowing what others do to hold space in a weft-faced weave structure. Ideas, anyone?

You can see my marking of space with the Sharpie (think I misspelled this yesterday), which I do instead of using a cartoon. The square above the blue one is going to have wavy diagonal stripes. I might practice clipping a cartoon on with that section so that I can see what works best for me from all of the suggestions that I posted yesterday.

I got some blues dyed yesterday. I decided to use a 2% formula for these yarns that I will then use for ikat. When I overdye, I am hoping that the tied portion will be a good 2% while the overdyed portion will be an even more intense blue. When I dyed the yarns for Peruvian Mask,
I had to try several formulas to get the colors that I wanted. I ended up using a 2.5% red and a 4% red.

How do you keep your cartoon in place? I forgot to ask that in yesterday’s post. I also meant to look up the link for rare earth magnets. Here it is.

Sherri Woodard Coffey

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The dye used is Pro Sabraset/Lanaset from ProChem. The color is Mustard, which has been a very useful color for me, even with the unfortunate color name. The Sun Yellow is a much clearer color. The greenish tags are the same ones that they use on plants. I write the weight of the yarn and the dye formula—100% Mustard or 50 Mustard 50 Scarlet—whatever the case may be. When they are balled up, the formula is written on a string hangtag and attached to the yarn, so that when there are bits and pieces left, I will know the formula for dyeing more.

A couple of months ago, I came to the bottom of one of the huge containers of yarn. I weighed and labeled what I needed for the current project, then did the same for the other skeins, which I left in a basket. I am so glad those skeins were ready and waiting today. All I had to do was wash them, use my spreadsheet to know the amounts of dyestuffs to add to the pots, and I was good to go. Since I use two wefts in my weaving, I nearly always dye in twos. Yesterday, I picked up two skeins which weighed 240 grams and two skeins weighed 239 grams. How lucky is that! Since I use two dyepots, I mixed up the numbers so that, theoretically at least, each dye run will be equal. I learned the hard way to mix the yarns from the two pots, even if they are the same color. If I don’t, there will be a barely discernable line running across the weaving when you start the second color run.

Okay, I admit it.  Doing this post is just avoidance.  Don’t want to do the other stuff that really MUST get done.  However, I am dyeing even as I sit here at my computer, so all is not lost.  Just out of curiosity (and avoidance), I scanned in the yarns that I am currently using because I wanted to see how well the colors via scanner/computer compared to real life.  They actually look pretty accurate.  That means that if I had a drawing of a design and wanted to plug in the actual yarn colors—well, it’s a possibility. 

The Sun Yellow on the left is the one that I don’t have enough of so am dyeing another skein.  I can start blending yarns from the 2 dye lots at some point so that it will looked planned.  Between running out and checking on the dyeing, I am doing dishes, laundry, vacuuming, mopping, etc.  And then there’s the issue of the clutter, which just may have to go into a box for a few days for sorting later.  We always go for coffee late on Sundays, so I’m thinking a trip to the Y is in order before the coffee break.  That means everything has to stop around 3-ish.  I have to allow plenty of time for the workout as it’s still all very new to me.

Dye session

The battery on my camera needed charging, so the colors are much richer in real life.  You can see the plant tags on the skeins and some of the mixtures used.

I’m not sure that Linda K even does the sample books that I mentioned anymore, but I can tell you the colors that I use. These are all Sabraset and the colors from ProChem shown on my screen don’t match the real colors: Deep Red, Scarlet, Mustard Yellow, Sun Yellow, Violet, Navy, Black, Turquoise, Magenta, and Royal Blue—guess I was wrong—it’s ten colors.

For anyone interested in starting in on dyeing–I know I’ve seen mention of color samples by other folks besides Linda Knutson. One is called Color by Number Basic Book is by Sara Lamb and Deb Menz (http://www.debmenz.com/books.htm). They are quite expensive, so maybe just put on the cloak of a mad scientist and experiment. For instance, a normal dye run uses a 1% solution, which for 454 grams of yarn would be 4.54 grams of dye. To mix colors, you might use 85% (of 4.54 grams) Sun Yellow and 15% Deep Red to get an orange. You can keep doing that using varying formulas like 60% Sun Yellow, 40% Deep Red, until you get a complete range of yellows to reds. I use these gradations quite frequently.

Dye sheet-I use a spreadsheet with formulas already plugged in—I just ad the weight of the yarn. All of the recommended additives are there, I just don’t use them now.

As for additives, from my point of view, the only one you absolutely need is citric acid. I have used all of them based on dyeing instructions, but gradually started doing without. That being said, I do weigh my skeins, dyes, citric acid with a triple beam scale. I use masking tape to label each skein with the weight and dye formula. You can also cut up Tyvek envelopes and use those for labels. A friend gave me some plant labels that loop back onto themselves, and those make great labels also (those are on the skeins above). I want to know how to achieve that color if at some point I’m designing and think that the perfect color is that one. I don’t want to have to guess at how that color came into being.

I also have pH indicators (http://www.daigger.com/catalog/product?deptId=&prodId=12520&q=ph+strips) that I bought from Daigger. I always check the acid level in my dyepots. I have hard water with iron content, so I like to use rainwater when possible. You can buy Metaphos from ProChem, which is a water softener w/o all the added stuff you would get in Calgon from the grocery store. I think ProChem has triple beam scales, but I bought mine from Earth Guild. The scales are quite an investment, so you might want to use inexpensive ones until you decide whether dyeing is for you. I buy yarn from Henry’s Attic in skeins, so that is one more prep chore that I don’t have to do. Since I weave with two strands of yarn, I always dye at least 2 skeins at a time, trying to find skeins near the same weight so as to come out evenly. Would that be considered compulsive? Or can I call it practical?

Good luck on dyeing. It’s a wonderful world out there, but expect some disasters too.

About a thousand years ago, I dragged my spinning wheel to San Antonio, Texas for a class held at what was then called the Southwest Craft Center. It is now called the Southwest School of Art and Craft. Rachel Brown was teaching a class on spinning and dyeing. She brought her Rio Grande spinning wheel, which I promptly fell in love with. But it’s the dyeing that really grabbed me. She used a method of twisting the skeins so tightly that they formed a resist. She started out with the lightest of the dyes to be used, put the skein in, and let it simmer. Then the skein was removed, untwisted, then twisted again so that a different part had the resist, added another dye to the pot, and simmered the skein again. This could be repeated several times with the result of wonderful painted-looking skeins. When I got home, I ordered dyes and then promptly left them in the box they came in.

Many years later I flew to Chicago to take a class with Michele Wipplinger on natural dyes. We used her Earthues dye extracts for hundreds of small skeins of color-I still have those hanging on my wall and enjoy looking at them. I loved that class and would have traveled to Seattle to be an unpaid intern of Michele’s except for the part about the day job. The class was held in a now-defunct center that offered many classes on Diversey Street in what (to me, a small town gal) felt like the heart of the city.  I stayed in a Days Inn hotel on the same street, and every day walked to my class wearing my backpack. I loved the dye process and continued for many years at home. I made my own yarn samples with careful notes in case I wanted to duplicate a color. I planted madder and weld, collected goldenrod, and searched for other plants to grow. I practiced indigo daily for several weeks. But my inability to develop a good black was discouraging, as was the fact that one had to mordant the yarns in advance of dyeing.  When you’re dyeing pounds of yarn for a project, the process can take a couple of weeks.

Those considerations made me change to acid dyes, even though part of me still wants to use natural dyes. I read dye books. All of it seemed like gobbledygook. Finally, I bought a book of dye samples (with formulas) called Shades of Wool with Lanaset Dyes by Linda Knudson, and started in. At first I would travel to camera stores that had acetic acid, but then switched to citric acid—so much easier. It has taken lots of practice to finally get the colors I want when I want them, and to develop the spreadsheets that I use. All I do is enter the weight of goods (WOG) and the numbers for citric acid, dyes, etc just magically appear! I use a triple beam scale and waxed paper to weigh the ingredients for the dyepot. Amazing that a square of waxed paper can weigh 0.5 grams! I keep a calculator in the dye room to add in that weight to the strange numbers I get with percentages of the WOG. I no longer mix up the dyes ahead of time in a 1% solution. I just weigh the dye powder on the scale and throw it in the pot. The only problem child with this method is turquoise, which stubbornly refuses to dissolve easily.

  I have always used the Sabraset dyes from Pro Chem.  My palette is total of 8 colors in the Sabraset dyes that I can combine to mix almost anything I want. Recently I have tried a few colors in the WashFast line that I couldn’t mix easily with my regular dyes. Today I am dyeing what the WashFast folks call Deep Orchid. I bought the color because it would take going through many skeins of experimentation to achieve that color for myself. Okay, so I’m lazy—and in a hurry!

And in that vein, I also bought Key Lime. So far, both of these colors are looking really good. Only 30 minutes more for this dye session.

Earlier, while trying to get various shades of browns for a client, I bought other shades, some worked, some didn’t. What was interesting to me in these pre-mixed colors is how the various colors that make up the dye are visible during the mixing process.

Now about storing all these dyed skeins …

Various yarns dyed lately, usually 2 skeins of each color. The red one is really than this picture shows. It’s a combination of magenta and scarlet. Doing darks today, hope for overdyeing ikat tomorrow, then orchid and lime on Thursday.

The only positive thing about the weather here lately is that I can catch rainwater. We have had rain almost daily and no sunshine for at least two weeks. It’s getting old, even though I love rain! Under the pecan tree is a veritable forest of toadstools. In the back, there is a tower of some sort of fungus growing up from the ground around a small tree trunk. The first thing I think of when looking at these growths: Is it good for dyeing?

But—the weather has been good for my dyeing. I have planned out my next few projects and possible projects, then made a day-by-day plan for dyeing the yarns. I have been using the same water over and over, filling as needed with rainwater from the buckets under the drips. The only bad part of this method is carrying 5 gallon buckets of water to the dyepots and lifting them. I can never remember how much a gallon of water weighs, but it’s heavy to lift and pour w/o getting it all over you in the chilly air! (It’s much chillier than usual for this time of year—my heat is coming on) By using the water over, I am reducing the amount of citric acid in the dye water each time. The dyes have been exhausting well, leaving water free of color at the end.

Next weekend our guild is having a 3-day workshop with Jennifer Moore called Mathemagical. I am really looking forward to it.

Saturday I did something really, really dumb. While helping my mother with a garage sale, I opened a door (crowded by stuff) right into my face. I broke my glasses and now have to buy a new pair, as the lenses don’t fit anything current that I like. I really like these glasses and so far haven’t found anything else that I like. It’s a blow to vanity and the checkbook! But Gorilla glue is working well in the meantime.

Since the dyeing on takes checking every 1/2 hour or so, I am tying ikat and listening to audio books. Finally learned how to get back to the right place on the iPod. But today I am determined to do some vacuuming, dusting, and bathrooms. One of my least favorite things to do.

I took the piece below to get it photographed by David Wharton. Amazingly, when we took the camera card to the computer, he had pictures of the guild show on the screen. He was kind enough to also give me copies of those photographs.  So, there’s a twofer today.

Designing

With this piece, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do, so I cut out shapes from colored paper, stuck them on graph paper, scanned them and played around with color.  I’m still undecided about the orientation of this piece. Thinking about it …

Show

These are pictures that David took while at the center to photograph an installation by another artist. On the right in the picture below is the raffle piece and the door that leads into another room of weavings. He didn’t notice that the show continued into those rooms, so there are no pictures of them.

Weaving and Dyeing

I have almost finished the ikat part of the current piece and will need to get the dyeing done for the rest of the piece. That will have to wait until tomorrow since I need to get propane.

I went out to what I euphemistically call my dye studio and look what I discovered! I should be embarrassed by this, but it’s so interesting that I’m not. I forgot to empty the dyepots the last dye session, and these are pictures of the mold growing on the surface of the liquid left in the pot. You can see the circle formed by the pots, but I wonder about the circles formed by the mold. I’ve never seen mold like this. Both of these were taken with the phone, so not great pics, but still interesting.

After a good scrubbing, the pot is now bubbling away with ikat-tied yarns and black dye.

Since I already had acid water in the big pots outside, I put that into the quart jars and brought everything inside. I put each skein in its own jar and heated for 5 minutes. I took the jars out, stirred gently, and added the appropriate amount of dye, stirred again, and set the timer for 5 more minutes. To exhaust the dye, I used a total of 10 minutes in the microwave and then let them set in their jars until they cooled–almost. I was able to do 5-6 quarts at one time. If you click on the pictures of the yarns, you may be able to read the labels and see what the percentages are. If all goes well, tomorrow I will have skeins in colors that will work.