Dying Dying Dying

Up until now, Grace and I have been working diligently on all of the planning and housekeeping aspects of our project. We have finally gotten to the fun part- dying and construction! Woohoo! I spent all day this past Saturday in the studio dying fabric. I had to start out with a sample to see if our chosen fabric would even take the dye- thankfully it did! After the test I proceeded to dye 3lbs of fabric, breaking it up into 3 dye baths. The dying took just under two hours and turned out beautifully as for the rinsing... Ohh the rinsing, my least favorite part of fabric dying. I recruited Grace's help for the rinsing since I knew it would be quite a task, especially since we were dying the fabric a shade of red (my worst enemy- it is the toughest color to rinse). With the two of us continually rinsing, it look us well over 3 hours to get the water to run completely clear. For those of you who aren't well versed in fabric dying and rinsing, it is essentially the same thing as washing clothes the old fashioned way- imagine doing that for three hours. Sheesh! While I hate the process of rinsing, I love the end result of hand-dyed fabric which makes the labor intensive process worth it. I was just very grateful for Grace's help, otherwise I would have been there ALL night!

Here are some before, progress, and after shots!





Until next time,
Anne Douglas