Tag Archives: WashFast

Fall, finally!

Fall

Fall colors at my mother’s.

It’s pretty boring around here–dye, weave, dye, weave, … and work on getting outdoor clean-up projects done. Boxes of shred material will go to the shredder soon, too. The weather is nice right now, so those things are the priority.

I know we don’t have fall color like the northeastern part of the country does, but our fleeting color is still pretty. A couple of hours after taking this picture I loaded it on my computer and realized that for me, the grasses are almost as pretty as the trees. I love trees, but I’m a prairie girl. When I take road trips to the east, claustrophobia sets in. It’s so frustrating to not be able to see areas off to the side of the road!  Here we have wide open spaces, not like farther west, but still mostly open. In fact, I’ve heard visitors from the northeast say that they feel so exposed. By the way, to get the full effect of the picture, click on it. And speaking of grasses and prairie, that’s my next weaving project.

Yarns

What about these colors!

So, here are the fruits of my labor so far. The WashFast dye colors from left to right are:Turkey Red, Magenta, Red, Tiger Lily, Chinese Red, Deep Purple. All were dyed at 1%. I dyed the red and magenta first, and they were disappointing to me. But I continued on and gradually came to like these colors. The really interesting part will be to start mixing colors. The blues and another purple will be next. Dyeing in this way means that I can use the same water over and over, which not only saves on water, but also on all the additives that go into the pot.

Research? Of course not!

Magentss I’m doing some dyeing with new-to-me dyes. I know of other weavers who use these WashFast dyes (labeled Nylomine), so I thought I’d give them a try, but that wasn’t the main impetus. It was because of the pairing of WashFast dyes and the Pantone forecast for spring 2014. It’s a PDF, so I can’t post the exact link, but it’s first on this page.

I’ve ordered the dyes, made a plan for getting samples done, and started Sunday. Right away, I was concerned. But first, going back a bit, I have the wool color card from ProChemical for these dyes and had noticed that nearly all of the colors were dyed at a 1.5-2% solution. Most all of the dyeing I do is at 1%, so that’s how I’m doing my samples. From the first weighing of the dyes, I noticed that it seems to take more dye to reach that 1% amount. I also noticed that when the dyes are added to the water in the pots, they look anemic. So, I decided to do a little research about the difference between WashFast dyes and the Lanaset-type I’ve been using (ProChem calls them Sabraset). That led me to Paula Burch and her All About Dyeing website. What I have discovered is that these dyes may not be as washfast and lightfast as the Sabraset dyes. I’m going to forge on though. Dyeing all the reds now, but then I’m going to clean out those pots and start with yellows, moving up the list to darker colors.

By the way, I knew about Paula’s dyeing website but had forgotten about what a wealth of information it is, from descriptions of dyes to methods to book reviews, it runs the gamut. Check it out.