project: some hand dyed yarn

This past quarter, I was teaching a Surface Design class. This is a class where the students learn how to dye their own fabric, use different fabric manipulations with dye (such as shibori, tie dye), learn how to batik, silk paint, embroider, bead....the list could go on for days. It was a pretty successful class, and the students truly surprised me with their creativity when putting the different manipulations together for their final project.

Teaching this class was a breath of fresh air for me, considering I haven't taught it in over a year. Also, this was a main focus of mine while in grad school: fabric modification. So by having all of this creative energy around me, and also teaching a knitwear class this past quarter as well, I decided to dye some of my own yarn.

The first yarn I dyed was using an indigo dye bath. The dye bath that was mixed was using pre-reduced indigo crystals and color remover. This project definitely got messy and was super smelly, but was a lot of fun. I would dye with indigo all of the time if I could!

The Blues are Still Blue

The yarn is a Malabrigo Rios in Natural, and I did about 2-3 dips into the indio dye. Definitely had to make sure the wool was absorbing the dye with each dip (Note: if you have note dyed with indigo before, it is when the dye comes in contact with oxygen that it turns the deep blue color. The color after the first initial dip is a blue-green, an as it "sits" in the air, it turns blue. The longer it is "sitting" in the air, and the more dips it gets, the darker the blue).

The whole process was loads of fun, and my students thought I was crazy. The rinse was the biggest pain, and I still think there is some dye in the yarn that will come off with use (similar to your jeans). So I clearly cannot make a hat out of the yarn, but will probably make some fingerless gloves, etc.

I was really happy with the variegation of the blue color, and the yarn is just as super soft as when I first purchased it (from Loopy Yarns, of course). I am calling it The Blues are Still Blue (yes, after the Belle & Sebastian lyric).


The second yarn I dyed was a Cascade 220 Wool, using all Fiber Reactive dyes. I normally dye cellulose (plant) fibers with Fiber Reactive dyes, so this was going to be an experiment with me.

The yarn was purchased from Dharma Trading Company, as well as the dyes. The process used is very similar to the process of tie dyeing: soaking the yarn in soda ash, mix the dyes with the water/urea ratio, removing the yarn from the soda ash, laying it out and then adding the dye to various spots on the yarn.


So the colors I used were: Rose Red, Chartreuse, and Navy. This is the result, 12 hours later:

Cape Dory

None of the colors were what I was hoping them to be (the navy is more purple, the chartreuse is more yellow, the red is more hot pink), but it is a very pretty colorway that I am calling Cape Dory (yes, after the Tennis song).

Definitely more yarn to be dyed in 2011! I am very excited about it, and just need to figure out how to a) sell it or b) make thing from it. Suggestions?