Sunday, October 01, 2006

Jar Dyeing Experiment

I've been wanting to try the jar dyeing method for a while especially as others are having such wonderful results with it. I tend to have problems picking colors to go together in a blend and usually end up with blends by accident. ;) Dandy if you're not going for any special result...disastrous if you're trying for something and cannot achieve it. I'm sure as I learn more and progress with it, I'll learn how to get what I intend at some point. In the mean time, I'm enjoying the ride. This post will be picture heavy as I actually photographed the process. Aren't you amazed?!

First, a word of advice. You will never realize how dirty your appliances are until you take pictures fully intending to post them on the internet! YIKES! For my first experiment into this method of dyeing I decided to go back to an old favorite of mine. Kool Aid. ("What was the first dye you used?" Me-"Kool Aid" "Really, What was the first thing you dyed with it" Me-"Mom's carpet."lol) So what you see on the middle of the stove top is three small drinking glasses. The front one has 3 packets of Grape, the Middle is 3 packets of Mango, and the back is 3 packets of Black Cherry. All were disolved with approximately 5 oz of water. To the left of that is the cleaned fleece and to the right...one pot with meat rack in the bottom to lift the jars up and one of the 4 wide mouth quart jars I fill up.

I stuffed some fiber into the jar and then added about 2 oz of Kool Aid. Then I would add another layer of fiber and top that with dye and finish with a third layer of both fiber and dye. I did three quart jars with the colors in it and a quart jar with just black in it (the black is an experiment). What you see here is what the jars looked like before I poured approx a quarter of a cup of vinegar over the tops of them. Before I placed lids on the jars I topped them off with water so that the wool was covered.



Here they are, topped off, lidded up and loaded in the pot. I filled the pot with water leaving about an 1/2" head room on the pot. Objective at this point is to get the whole jar hot right on up to the tops. Notice how pretty they still look? Wait till the heat hits them!










At this point, they have heated as much as needed and are cooling a bit before I remove them from the pot. They will stay in the jars to cool overnight and I'll rinse tomorrow and then set out to dry. Notice any changes in the colors? To be honest...there are spots that look like bruises.....I hope that cards out.








I've loads more to catch up on, but have to go finish making dinner. I'll do another post later. ;)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this! I've been thinking about trying this one of these days.

Unknown said...

this is gorgeous...i wanna see the results...they're going to be awesome!!!

April said...

I managed to get pictures of the fiber dry and will try to post tonight. It's been definately an interesting experiment thats for sure!