Any dyers here?
By nancygibson
@nancygibson (3736)
France
December 23, 2006 9:34am CST
Anyone here enjoy the craft of dyeing? If so, do you prefer natural dyes (things like woad, weld, madder etc) or do you prefer the syntheyic dyes for their bright bold colours? I usually go with natural dyes but like the acid dyes for sock wool, the colours are so bright and its easy to do things like self striping yarn that way.
2 responses
@ElusiveButterfly (45940)
• United States
27 Dec 06
You are really into it! I have always been interested in making my own yarns, but I would need to have access to sheep and you can't have sheep where we live. I will have to watch others and be happy with being able to see it done.
@nancygibson (3736)
• France
28 Dec 06
You don't have to have your own sheep, the wool growers will post fleece anywhere in the world! I'm lucky though that Wales is sheep country so its easy to be inspired by all the lovely sheep breeds being raised here
@auburndreams (838)
• United States
28 Dec 06
I'd like to do more dyeing. But with a tiny garden and tiny kitchen, natural dyeing isn't very practical. So we get our dyes from dharma trading company. We've dyed canvas for bow socks (archery, not hair bows). Some of those I did pattern dyeing on with direct application from bottles. I dyed a white shirt I had while I was at it.
I've done batik but that was years ago. My last attempt failed because I forgot you have to dip it in cold dye, not warm dye. The warm dye melted the wax so the design didn't show up.
I also use leather dye on gourds. But I assume you meant fabric dyeing only.
@nancygibson (3736)
• France
28 Dec 06
No reason why we can't expand the discussion to dyeing other things. The gourds sound fascinating, do you need a dry climate to grow that kind? Round here we can grow marrows and courgettes but thats about it from the squash family
@auburndreams (838)
• United States
30 Dec 06
Gourds grow well in S. California but they are space hogs, so we usually buy ours from the Welburn Gourd Farm near Temecula. I did grow them last year but I won't do it again unless we move somewhere with a real yard. I grew tiny jewelry gourds and giant snake gourds. If you go to my page at http://www.gourdmania.com the very first gourd on the banner with the weaving on it was dyed with a yellow leather dye, just to give you an idea of how that looks.
