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Me Musing .
. . October
28, 2008 . . .
I have been
unable to move ahead with
any particular creative endeavor the past few days, so decided I
would attempt to dye a few of the 'silk hankies' that I ordered
from Connie, a very helpful dyer/weaver/creative in Eureka, California.
She has a great blog
site which you might enjoy checking out!
Connie sent
along the instructions for dyeing and I decided to try out some
dyes I had bought while in Eugene, Oregon in the summer. They are
already mixed up, so I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to try
this . . . and just maybe
get back in the creative mood again!
I began with
the plain white silk fibres in 'hankie' form.
After
wetting them really good, I just dabbed on colour with a stiff brush.
On the left
I used some of the yellow and blue I had mixed to form a spring
green, then added some red areas to see what would happen. This
was all more of an experiment than anything else. (Remember the
hand-dyed
silk bombyx hankies I had bought at the yarn store in
Ashland last week??? . . . well, I wanted to try doing them myself!)
On the right
I used the 'marine green', which is really more of a teal colour.
After I had
coloured in all the white areas (on both sides), I rolled up the
hankie, wrapped it in plastic wrap and set it aside until I was
finished with the other 3.
When
all four were finished, I placed them in a bamboo steamer and steamed
them for 20 minutes. I had bought the 'mini' 2 layer steamer about
4 years ago, yet never used it, so decided it was perfect to 'dedicate'
(along with an old pan) to steaming dyed items!
While those were 'cooking', I cleaned up the mess and found some
old towels to use later for drying them.
After
they had properly steamed and cooled, I rinsed them and spread them
out on the old towel. When I rinsed the yellow-green one first,
a lot of yellow dye came out and I wondered if I should
have added vinegar as Connie's directions suggested.
(I hadn't added it as the instructions on the pre-mixed dyes didn't
call for it!)
The
rust orange on left didn't seem to lose a lot of dye in the rinsing
and neither did the marine greens . . . so maybe it was just something
peculiar to the yellow!
I have found that using my digital camera to chronicle projects
like this works really well . . . and I thought you might enjoy
seeing them too!
Until soon,
Che'usa
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