To Dye for

Today I attended the most amazing class at Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria, Virginia.  Dye Day with Judy Gula, if you look under at the Annex (workshops/classes) you can find more information on this class http://www.artisticartifacts.com/index.htm.

You need to gather cotton, silk and rayon that you want to dye the most fabulous colors bring them to class along with some glass jars (so you can see the colors) with lids and Judy will supply everything else you need to have a wonderful dye day.  You do have to wait a full 24 hours before washing your dyed items to make sure they have deep rich color.  My jars have been sitting in the sun all afternoon, tomorrow they go in a washing machine on hot (it might takes a few cycles to get the excess dye out) pop them in the dryer and they are done and ready for my next project!

To get started you soak your pieces in combination of soda ash and water, wring them out, layer a few pieces in your jar, use a couple of tablespoons of dye with some water and pour it on one side of your jar, do this again with another color and add more stuff, poke your stuff down with a wooden dowel, more dye. more stuff till your jar it full .  You can also add a third color of dye and fill the jar up with a mixture of soda ash and water, put the lid on and set in the sun.  I managed to get 6 jars done (two of my jars were very large so I could pack tons of stuff in them).

The first 4 jars have combinations of sky blue, turquoise, scarlet, fuchsia, sun yellow and bright yellow.  After we used all those colors Judy had us select more colors and mixed them up for us.  How about butterscotch, lemon-lime, chartreuse, turkey red, bronze and eggplant!   The two large jars have a combination of those colors.  What is so cool is you will never be able to duplicate the color you made again, and it's always a surprise when you wash your items.

More tomorrow - I'll let you know how washing day goes.  Thank you Judy for a fabulous day and to my classmates who were very enthusiastic and made the day fun.