Fabric to Dye For

My long time friend Gayle bought my book Fabric to Dye For and had such a good time dyeing fabric this summer she had to share her photos with us. Here are some of the things that she has done already. She is going to do the two color gradations this winter inside.

Here are all of the rainbows.

Dark, medium light using lemon yellow, fuchsia and turquoise.

Bright and warm silk rainbows all on one piece of fabric.

Using her platters to dye fabric flat outside. She said she didn’t even cover these with plastic and they cleaned up just fine.

Over dyed commercial fabrics.

Here’s what Gayle had to say about the whole thing.

Hello!

Here are the pictures I promised you.

I wanted to do all the color ways in your new book.  Fabric to Dye for.  So I mixed all my dyes and set about doing that.

I started out doing the "squishing" of the fabric, in a dish pan, to saturate it with the dye but quickly realized my pan was too shallow and I was making a huge mess.  So I retreated to the method I normally use.  I  just poured the dye over the crushed fabric and manipulated it for a few seconds, in it's container, then moved on to the next color.  So all of my colors are mottled but that's okay I still love them.  Next time I'll use a deeper pan or more dye solution in the pots.

The instructions were simple to follow and I had fun while doing it which is after all the most important part of dyeing fabric.

I am impressed with the value differences of the fabrics and I now have a lot of fabric to choose from when making a small quilt.

I did the flat dyeing as well using the styrofoam boards and just squirted the mixed colors on the fabric.  The foam platters worked out very well even though I didn't cover them in plastic.  They cleaned up beautifully except for the blue and that came right off with 409.  It takes dye off of white siding too.  I am not the neatest person I have to confess.

I use fat quarters to clean up spills while mixing dyes and mixing my colors in the runs.   I put in the pan and dumped the leftover dye into before I stopped using the dish pan.

I liked the colors I got using your recipes as well.  I can't wait now to use other primary colors to see what different colors I can achieve.

I am also anxious to do some complimentary color gradations.  But I can do that in the basement and don't need the warm weather for that. 

I dyed 11 yards of silk too.

I really do wish that this had been the first method I used to dye fabric.  I took a class early on and almost ran from the building screaming.  One of the great things about dyeing a lot of fabric is that you are no longer "saving" it for something special.  You can just dive in and use it!

Thanks Gayle, it looks all so yummy!!