Dyeing the sampler

After the patchwork and quilting, came the dyeing. (Did you notice I published two posts yesterday and they weren't in the right order?)  It was FAR too hot to be in the glasshouse, where I keep all my dyeing stuff, so I brought bits and pieces into the laundry.  I haven't done much dyeing of cotton, apart from when I did dyeing as one of the subjects in my Studio Textiles and Design course and that was a couple of years ago.  So there was lots of reading the instructions, checking where I had put the chemicals I would need, re-reading and then doing.

I was very excited when I saw that the printed patterns were not taking the dye up and the designs were standing out much more than on the pale fabric.

 I am not sure what is going on with the cotton batting, you can see it around the edges, it is mottled.  But it is ok on the back.  Not to worry, it will be cut off or sewn in.  I probably should experiment more and see if it happens again, and which side reacts this way.

The back turned out evenly dyed.

The dyeing has hidden a lot of my quilting too, it is not nearly as obvious that I have some rather big errors in it.

The different plain cottons took the colour up slightly differently also.

The rinsing out part of the dyeing is rather distressing - you use SO MUCH water.  I wanted to take the rinse water out to the poor suffering plants but wasn't sure if it would poison them; after all, you have to use a mask when mixing up the powders. And there are chemicals added also.

So I emailed the Jacquard company to ask if they have any advice about using it in greywater systems. I got a reply straight away!  It said that the owner of the company uses rinse water for greywater and it should be ok.  But I forgot to ask about the salt and urea that are used in the process too, so I will email again.

As I mentioned earlier, we had a very hot day and we tried to save some of the plants from the direct sun.  We had some success but some things may just have to be let die, especially if the forecasters are correct about the hot weather that is predicted to last until March.

The lettuces in the round tub were shaded, unlike the other.

Poor burnt camellias.