Monday, March 07, 2005

Custom Dye Jobs for the Day

Well I am now exceedingly behind, but hope to get caught up this morning.

Things to do today is to dye fabric a rich Payne's Grey color, this should be fairly quick but I'm still having problems getting a good orange.

We've had two water main breaks in the last month and this is sending a lot of rust through the system making it impossible to get orange. Every red or orange fabric I dye turns purplish when it's rinsed in the washing machine.

Due to yesterdays high winds and the grass fires west of here there's a lot of dust and muck in the air, now my allergies are killing me.

If the Payne's Grey turns out ok I'll post the recipe here later, btw this is cotton I'm dyeing not wool.

For orange on wool I'm overdyeing osage orange with cochineal. I'm using alum as my mordant and am adding cream of tartar to the dye bath.

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